Three Alphas and an Omega
by Dionys
Summary: Yashiro, an Omega, discovers too late that Doumeki is an Alpha, not a Beta as he claims. And the future unravels in ways that neither of them saw coming. [As seen in my Cherry Blossoms collection]
1. An Alpha in Disguise

_**Author's note:** This story was supposed to be a self-contained one-shot but thanks to a few lovely commenters in my _Cherry Blossoms _collection, I've started a new multi-chapter story based on the Omegaverse. Thank you so much to everyone who read it and left love!_

 _For new readers, here's a quick warning for Chapter 1: there are certain themes in this piece that are quite full-on. In fact, there's a specific, controversial, semi-political angst in this story that goes beyond canon_ Saezuru _angst, because of the new Omegaverse element (and because it's where my imagination went). And I've turned up the dial to 11 on all emotions and all melodrama. So please read at your discretion. But if you're like me and you revel in all that's messed-up in Omegaverse and_ Saezuru _and fiction in general, hope you read on and enjoy! Xx_

 _One last thing: I've done a sketch of one of the scenes in this story - Omega Yashiro and Alpha Doumeki having in-heat sex. If anyone wants to have a look, head for my Ao3, same page, same place!_

* * *

Yashiro had known he was infertile for almost as long as he had known that he was an Omega.

In fact, because his stepfather first stole into his room long before he reached puberty, he always idly hypothesised that infertility was his body's way of protecting itself; building up barriers against unwanted pregnancies and against the relentlessness of the outside world. A world in which he had been born weak.

Years later, he wore his infertility as a badge of pride. He would scoff at condoms whenever his Alphas drew them out with shaking hands – if they were in the right state of mind to do so in the first place.

'No need,' he would say with a smile that made quick work of what remained of an Alpha's senses. 'I can't get pregnant. You can come inside me as much as you want.' He would lick his lips and pull the Alpha closer by his tie. 'Dream come true, isn't it?'

But he was always cautious about one thing – his collar. Whether he could get pregnant or not, an unwanted bond was something he went to great lengths to avoid throughout both his teenage and adult life. The closest he had come to slipping up on this count was when one of his subordinates – an Alpha – grew obsessed with him. Out of desperation, the subordinate hid Yashiro's collar and suppressants on the first day of Yashiro's heat cycle, waited, and then pinned him down on his desk. Yashiro didn't like to think what might have happened if Nanahara hadn't burst in at that moment.

The last thing he wanted was to be beholden to one person – any one person – who could so easily discard him after something as simple as a bite. He would lose all his power. He would be nothing more than a child being held down in a room with his mother asleep only metres away.

The subordinate was fired – it was pity that moved Yashiro to spare his life – and from then on, Yashiro told Nanahara that all future hirees were to be Betas, with no exceptions.

He still kept his favourite Alphas on speed-dial; the cop from the OCD, Ryuuzaki, even Misumi (not that Misumi ever took the bait these days – Yashiro noticed he always made himself scarce when Yashiro was due for his heat). But his subordinates, those who were always near him, even on the rare occasion that an unscheduled heat came about or when his suppressants simply didn't work, were all to be passive Betas.

Passive only some respects though, Yashiro thought. He would smile as he watched Nanahara squirm in a combination of discomfort and arousal each time he was privy to one of Yashiro's conquests. He knew Betas could sometimes be a fun ride.

But he much preferred the mindlessness of an Alpha when he responded to an Omega in heat. He preferred to see the way he lost all humanity in his eyes and became nothing more than an animal. Having that kind of power over Alphas made Yashiro's toes curl.

And he could see that there was something of an Alpha in Doumeki's eyes the moment Yashiro saw him. Everything about him reeked of an Alpha.

Except for the fact that they had met in the middle of Yashiro's heat. Doumeki had pulled the cop off Yashiro, both the cop and Yashiro dripping in sweat and arousal, the specific smell of an Alpha and Omega's sex filled the room, Yashiro's heat especially permeating through all the hallways, enough that even some of the Betas struggled to concentrate on their work.

And Doumeki hadn't responded to it at all.

'Are you okay, sir?'

An immensely deep voice. Words delivered in a steady monotone; as expressionless as his eyes.

Yashiro had panted, his body aflame with a need that had quickly turned into frustration when his Alpha was pulled off him.

'Of course I'm fine, you moron.'

Doumeki Chikara was tall and broad and silent and fiercely handsome in that way that said he had no idea of his own self-worth. Yashiro took to him immediately. And then Nanahara sold him on the rest.

'We're short on people at the moment. And he's not good at talking so I thought we could use him as a bodyguard. You wanted one, right Boss? Oh, plus he's a Beta,' Nanahara added. 'So, you know, no problems there.'

They had stared at each other properly for the first time in Yashiro's office. Doumeki's gaze was impassive, hiding his nerves, hiding his strange sense of overwhelmment. And Yashiro's gaze was benign but scrutinising. Everything about Doumeki, Yashiro thought again, reeked of an Alpha, no matter what he claimed to be. The way Yashiro's pulse crept up was a sign.

But nothing could have proved that Doumeki was a Beta more emphatically than the fact that he refused to get hard, even in Yashiro's mouth.

He still tested Doumeki to be sure. He didn't relax fully until he was sure that Doumeki was a bull without any horns. He forced Doumeki to watch other Alphas fuck him. He neglected his suppressants during one heat cycle and kept Doumeki close (and kept Nanahara and Sugimoto close, unsure if he could handle an unleashed Alpha the size of Doumeki). He sucked Doumeki's limp cock more times than he could count. And still nothing. And so, when the proof seemed overwhelming, he allowed himself to settle into the thrill of having a new Beta plaything.

After all, who had ever heard of an impotent Alpha?

* * *

'I'm going to take a bath.'

'Okay, Boss.'

Yashiro closed the door behind him, turned on the faucets and stripped, unaware that in a few short weeks when he lost the use of his right arm, even such simple acts would become obstacles. Steam slowly filled the room.

Then he glanced at the door. He imagined Doumeki in the kitchen, drawing out plates and cutlery.

When Yashiro had learned of the awful reasons behind Doumeki's impotence, his suspicions came to the fore again. Here, suddenly, was a valid reason why even an Alpha might lose all sex drive. Perhaps Doumeki was an Alpha after all. In the end though, Yashiro reasoned, impotent Alpha and impotent Beta both amounted to the same thing, as far as Yashiro was concerned. A bull without the horns.

And yet, he opened one of the drawers beneath the sink and drew out his spare collar. He fastened it around his neck, casting another wary glance at the door, before he stepped into the bathtub.

* * *

Doumeki felt himself slipping. And what was worse, he knew that Yashiro could tell. There wasn't much that escaped that sly, shrewd, perfect gaze.

He reasoned to himself in the same way Yashiro did. True, he had lied about being a Beta. But there was no Alpha left in him anymore. Not after seeing the look in his sister's eyes as their father rutted into her from above.

He had heard in passing that the beautiful Young Leader of Shinseikai only hired Betas. And so when Nanahara approached him for the first time about the position of bodyguard and then asked him about his status, he had lied instinctively. He had enough connections to forge his documents in kind.

As much as he disliked watching Yashiro open himself up to every Alpha who wanted him, it didn't take much for Doumeki to rein himself in over the first month. If Yashiro wore his infertility as a badge of pride, Doumeki did the same with his impotence. His impotence and his white lie about being a Beta were his ticket to a new life. His ticket to staying by Yashiro's side.

But he began slipping. Slowly. Something stirred the day he watched Yashiro touching himself, oozing fluids from his hole, sending out pheromones by the droves – pheromones that hadn't affected Doumeki until that moment. He didn't know what it was; perhaps a combination of the fact that his own words were turning Yashiro on like that, the alluring way Yashiro's long, bare legs were crossed, the look on face, the fact that his head was in Doumeki's lap.

He had escaped that situation by grace of yet another lie ('I... can't remember the rest') and by leaving the room, his mind spinning.

From then on, his dislike of watching Yashiro with other men became something far stronger.

And Yashiro had noticed. Doumeki was sure of it. Yashiro always noticed. In fact, he was confused about why Yashiro hadn't yet fired him. He didn't know that Yashiro was confused about it himself.

* * *

Years ago, when Misumi and Yashiro slowly eased out of their sexual relationship, Misumi did what he always did – he leaned into his feelings of possessiveness, hoping it would shield his possessiveness.

'Have you ever thought about... fated pairs?' he asked once, gruffly, amazed he had even managed to make the words come out of his mouth.

That was the day Yashiro had been made second-in-command of Shinseikai and Misumi had taken him out to celebrate. Yashiro wore his collar, like he always did when he was due to start his heat cycle. Misumi noted the looks Yashiro gathered as he walked, ranging from lust to disgust to resentment – resentment that an Omega had the audacity to give off such an aura of self-assuredness and even superiority. Resentment that he wore a collar as though it was something to be proud of, rather than ashamed of. It was a kind of resentment that had twined itself around Hirata's heart in particular. And Misumi walked beside him, glaring at anyone whose eye he met.

Paternal thoughts, he told himself. Think only paternal thoughts.

It was almost easy to do when Yashiro laughed a short, childish laugh. He leaned back in his chair at the restaurant.

'Fated pairs? You're joking, right?' Then his look changed and he cocked his head to the side. 'Or is it that you're offering, Oyaji?'

Misumi was thoroughly annoyed to feel a flush claim his cheeks.

'If we were a fated pair we'd know by now,' he muttered under his breath, nodding awkwardly at the waiter who topped up their wine glasses. He didn't have to look at Yashiro to know they were thinking of heated fucks on office floors, desks, walls. Binds and gags. A heat that had claimed them both for a long time.

Far too long, Misumi thought.

'I can't believe you believe in that kind of crap,' Yashiro teased.

'I don't.'

Misumi didn't, really. But sometimes, in the past, when he watched Yashiro sleeping beside him, during the odd occasion they were both too exhausted to move afterwards, he had wondered. Sometimes even hoped.

Paternal thoughts, he told himself now, a little wearily.

'I'm just saying maybe it's time you stopped being so loose,' he said, trying and failing to sound nonchalant. 'As second-in-command of Shinseikai, there's a certain moral standard you need to uphold –'

'Moral standard,' Yashiro laughed, as though it was a game that children had made up. 'I'll keep my collar and my suppressants handy. They're the only promises I can make.'

'Yashiro –'

'Did you really think you'd be able to make an honest man out of me like that? Enticing me with the bullshit idea that my _fated pair_ was wandering around out there?' He gestured vaguely towards the restaurant windows with his wine glass.

'Worth a try.'

'You know what I think? I think _you_ believe it.' Yashiro leaned forwards on his elbows. 'You believe in fated pairs and soul bonds and all that, don't you, Oyaji? The big, tough Alpha Yakuza leader, secretly hoping to be swept off his feet by his fated Omega.'

'For God's sake, I was just –'

'Hey, maybe Amou's your fated pair. You guys could make history as the only ever fated Alpha and Beta pair. He's probably praying to the gods for it every night.'

Misumi sighed, drained his wine glass and beckoned to the waiter for more. Meanwhile, Yashiro's smirk never left his face.

* * *

Doumeki's desire to stay by Boss' side at all costs was being increasingly hampered by his growing desire to have Boss. To defile him and taste his sweet nectar and smell his need and plunge into his heat and bite that tender place in his neck that would make him his, Doumeki's, forever. Irrevocably and unquestioningly.

Those two things – his desire to stay and his desire to have – were pulling in such complete opposite directions that Doumeki often forgot who he was and what he was doing. He had taken Yashiro's hot, hard cock into his mouth several times, and somehow managed to stop himself there. Luckily, Yashiro had only been horny during those times, never in heat. Doumeki had always finished himself off in the bathroom, unbenownst to Yashiro.

The two of them kept deluding themselves and each other, like it was a dangerous game. They kept up the facade that Doumeki was nothing more than a Beta. That there wasn't something between them, pulsing and unignorable and real. Something that made Yashiro angrily recall his conversation with Misumi.

Doumeki's dreams were filled with gold hair and an enigmatic smile. Images of a twisted, marked body writhing beneath him, calling his name.

Dislike became resentment became out-and-out jealousy. Protectiveness became possessiveness became obsession became… something yet stronger. And he finally lost control, almost completely, when Yashiro leaned in to lick the fresh knife wound on his face and pulled him into the backseat of the car.

Yashiro hadn't even gone into heat. But he was hard. And wet. And his scent overpowering.

 _'Ah…_ Doumeki, you… you don't have to lick it. Just suck it and I'll finish quickly.'

 _And then I can ignore that Alpha glint in your eye. And I can stop leaking from that place. I can stop pulsing and craving more. Just finish me off, please._

And Doumeki felt something else take control of his hands. He lifted Yashiro's hips up, right up, so he could finally delve into that place that had invaded his wet dreams. He lapped at Yashiro's nectar, thrusting his tongue as far in as it could go, hearing Yashiro gasp in shock, hearing his moans spiral out of his control.

 _This is bad. Any more than this… and I won't be able to stop._

But somehow he stopped. He waited outside the car until his erection subsided, thanking all the gods that Yashiro hadn't gone into heat. At least they had been spared from that disaster. Doumeki would simply… simply be more careful from now on. He could do that.

He opened the car door to see Yashiro sleeping soundly.

* * *

Yashiro awoke feeling worse than he had felt in a long time. His arm was throbbing; sharp spikes of pain superimposing the constant dull ache. He felt around with his other arm blindly. His painkillers. His suppressants. Neither of them within reach.

He came to terms with where he was – the tiny, bare apartment that made him feel like he had travelled backwards in time. He realised he needed to find his medication, and soon. The suppressants weren't overly important – he was weeks away from his scheduled heat. But he needed the pain in his arm to stop.

Then came Doumeki fresh out of the shower, naked, and Yashiro's heart leaped to his throat. Seeing him again made it all flood back. That pull he didn't understand. Something drawing him to Doumeki in a way that he knew was dangerous.

And yet he played with it, like playing with fire. He pushed Doumeki back until he was lying on the futon. He gyrated his hips, moving them back and forth, torturing him, torturing them both, keeping that monster beneath him alive, pressing hard against his ass. He had lost control of his words. And his mind, in a way. He didn't know what had come over him.

He understood even less when Doumeki kissed him for the first time in the shower. When he was towelled off gently on the futon, in a way no one had ever done for him before. He felt like a child.

And then, suddenly, he felt like anything but a child.

It started deep in his chest – a sudden fire he had experienced countless times before. It spread over his whole body, concentrating there, where it started, as well as in his cock, his ass, and his head. It was a real, enveloping heat. His heat. Weeks early, in front of Doumeki.

Doumeki, whose eyes were no longer familiar.

Doumeki, who finally lost all control.

* * *

He stared at the way Yashiro crouched before him, the sweat that had broken out and mingled with the dampness from the shower, his hair lying flat, falling into eyes that were suddenly lost behind a haze of lust, moans erupting like small puffs as he doubled over, a hand grasping his chest.

Doumeki's breathing was suddenly laboured.

Yashiro's scent. Dear God, his scent.

'Dou… Doumeki,' Yashiro gasped, eyes watering, imploring. 'My suppressants… in the car…'

He knew, though, that nothing he said would make any difference. He could smell his own arousal, and Doumeki's. And the look in Doumeki's eye confirmed the situation beyond doubt.

Yashiro was an Omega who had gone into heat before a primed and virile Alpha.

He was pulled into a kiss that was hard and fast and unrelenting. Doumeki's body was no longer his own, it was a white-hot electricity controlled by something else – whatever it was that had manipulated Yashiro's body in the car, now multiplied several times over. And before Yashiro had a chance to catch his breath, Doumeki had suddenly pushed him backwards onto the futon, hands holding him down, his weight crushing him.

And Yashiro realised how badly he wanted to be crushed. How much he needed Doumeki inside. Doumeki reared back and Yashiro saw it again in his eyes, that feral, animal look of wanton need that he had seen in a long line of Alphas before Doumeki, and none of whom had ever inspired the feeling that was now surging from the pit of Yashiro's stomach.

Doumeki pressed himself hard between Yashiro's legs, his erection straining against his pants, hands clawing at Yashiro's thighs, moving lower, pushing, probing, until his fingers breached Yashiro's body and made him whimper. Doumeki ran his tongue, flat, against the side of Yashiro's neck, tasting his sweat and scent.

 _Collar,_ Yashiro realised breathlessly. He didn't have it with him; he never bothered keeping it nearby if he was weeks ahead of his heat. Panic filled him in a cold rush.

'Doumeki, stop! We can't –!'

He heard his own words, but his heart and body cried out for more. More. More of Doumeki, more of him everywhere, in his deepest places.

And it was like Doumeki heard the words he didn't say. He pulled his cock out and rubbed it against Yashiro's dripping hole, panting and sweating. His weight was too much. Yashiro couldn't push him off.

'No, wait! Don't –!'

But Doumeki pushed in for the first time. Yashiro's body opened for him, pulled him in, grasped him sweetly and urgently, with a gasp – almost a sigh of relief – that both felt in their very cores. Yashiro's head fell back and his moan was absorbed by the small room. Doumeki's head fell forwards onto his chest, low, tortured groans emanating from his own throat.

And then he rocked backwards slightly before he started thrusting, hammering, with an ancient, primal need. And Yashiro clung to him and cried out, his body opening to receive his mate, his fingers and nails digging into what he could to hold Doumeki there – his back, his arms.

Each time Yashiro cried out, Doumeki clenched his teeth and plunged deeper, sometimes holding himself there for a beat or two, as though trying to feel for it, for a wall or some kind of sign that he had gone as far as he had possibly could.

'Boss,' he would sometimes hiss, his voice tight.

'Oh, Doumeki! Hah! _Ahhn!'_

Doumeki bent down and covered Yashiro's nipples in saliva until they glistened. He pulled at them gently with his teeth as his cock plunged. He felt Yashiro's hand in his hair.

'Mmmh, fuck! Yes! Ah!'

Despite being caught between his fear and desire, Yashiro occasionally lent words to his innermost feelings.

 _I want him to make my body cry out in pain. Just as it has so many times before. Treat me the way the way they've always treated me._

'Harder! Ugh! Make it… hurt more!'

Doumeki was too lost for words. If he could speak through his haze, he would have explained why he didn't want to. Why it was enough, surely it was enough, what was already happening. With every thrust, he felt his cock get immersed in Yashiro's overwhelming, overflowing natural lubrication.

With a shuddering breath, Doumeki pulled out and turned Yashiro over. When he was on his hands and knees, Doumeki pulled him up and back, wanting suddenly to feel Yashiro's entire weight in his arms, to manipulate every piece of him. Yashiro's head fell back again, this time on Doumeki's shoulder, before Doumeki's cock plunged all the way in again, far enough for Yashiro to feel its base and Doumeki's bristly pubic hair pressing against his flesh.

'Ah!' he gasped, eyes watering. 'So... deep!'

Doumeki hooked his hands beneath Yashiro's knees, held him upright and pounded, pushing new sounds and smells from Yashiro with every thrust, both lost in the other's pheromones.

And suddenly, a single, dangerous thought filled Doumeki's mind.

 _Mine._

He ran his tongue over the side of Yashiro's face and revelled in his moans. His pleas.

'Ah, Doumeki! Yes, don't stop! Oh, I'm going to come!'

 _Mine_ , Doumeki thought again, in a voice that didn't sound like his.

 _I'm going to make you mine. Mine and no one else's._

And then, finally, the urge became too great. Without warning, he pushed Yashiro face-down onto the bed. Yashiro gasped and his stomach lurched. Doumeki was still buried deep inside him and his weight was suffocating once more.

And then he felt Doumeki's broad, hot tongue on the back of his neck. Marking out a place.

Yashiro's breath caught in his throat. That same panic filled him again. His neck tingled.

'No!'

 _Do it!_

'Doumeki, don't! Please!'

 _Do it, Doumeki. Oh, God, do it. Make me yours. I'm yours._

Doumeki bared his teeth for a split second before sinking them into Yashiro's flesh. He felt the skin break. Blood seeped into his mouth and he came hard at the same time.

* * *

It was the only thing Doumeki did that hurt.

It made Yashiro come.

And then it made him faint.

* * *

By the time Yashiro awoke again, it was dark outside and he had no idea how much time had passed. The pain in his arm had returned with a vengeance.

And then he felt something far worse. A telling, awful numbness in the back of his neck.

He sat up and reached for it. He felt the outline of a bandage of some kind. Gauze, perhaps. He turned to Doumeki, who slept beside him, breathing gently and evenly.

He flushed as he remembered. He remembered every second of it, even through the heat-induced veil. He remembered every touch. Every plunge. The pain and ecstasy of the bite. The bite that bound him to Doumeki for the rest of his life.

He felt sick.

He sat there on the edge of the futon, his mind alternating between memories of his stepfather and the vindictive thrill he felt when other Alphas fucked him and mauled at his collar, desperate to bite him, leaving only dents in the thin metal. Doumeki was worse than all of them. He had taken Yashiro's power from him. Forever. And there was nothing Yashiro could do.

Nothing except slowly get to his feet, gingerly put his clothes back on, and leave the flat, just as his phone lit up and started buzzing.

* * *

Doumeki expected the call from Nanahara telling him that he had been fired. In fact, he half-expected Yashiro to have sent a few underlings over to beat him up, or worse.

'What the hell did you do this time?' Nanahara demanded. 'Boss sounds like he really friggin' hates you.'

Doumeki remained silent.

* * *

And Yashiro remained silent on that count as well. Some of his subordinates noticed the edge of gauze that poked above his collar. When it was less tender and Yashiro was able to remove it, it was less conspicuous. But anyone looking closely could see the mark.

No one dared ask him about it, of course.

He felt it inside him. That pull to Doumeki. He knew that he could fire him, send him away, he could run away himself, and none of it would matter. Something would connect him to Doumeki, his body would yearn for him, no matter what he tried. He could feel it like the proverbial red thread, only it felt more like a coursing, living channel linking him to wherever Doumeki was.

And the worst part was that he alone felt it. It was the Omega's curse. Alphas were free to do whatever they wanted. Mark as many as they wanted.

He thought that was the reason he began to be physically sick. It even happened once in the middle of a meeting. And so, when urged by Nanahara, who had been left behind to apologise for the fact that his boss had thrown up into a pot plant, Yashiro agreed to see Kageyama.

* * *

Only Kageyama suspected what it might be. He glimpsed the bite on Yashiro's neck when he came into the clinic. It looked around a week old. He listened as Yashiro described his symptoms in a voice that affected his usual carelessness but somehow fell short, as though the wind had been taken out of his sails.

He also wondered about the strange little emotion that crept up inside him when he saw the bite. He wondered whose it was. He tried to wrap his head around the fact that Yashiro was bonded. He wondered, more than a little uncomfortably, if he ought to bring it up.

The tests he ran confirmed his suspicions. And then he sat before Yashiro with the results.

It took Yashiro a few tries to understand what he was being told. He had expected to be given medication for something. Anything. Vertigo even.

Anything but this.

Kageyama waited. He had sat at that desk and delivered the same news to many patients over the years. And he had seen reactions that ranged from cries of elation to manic depression. And though he knew he couldn't expect any of the former from Yashiro, he didn't know exactly what to –

Yashiro got to his feet suddenly, so fast that blood rushed to his head and he felt dizzy. He threw out an arm to keep from falling and scattered a tray of scalpels and equipment.

Kageyama was alarmed. 'Yashiro!'

'Get rid of it,' Yashiro said, his voice quiet and thin.

Kageyama's stomach flipped over at the expression on Yashiro's face. It was fear. Fear and disgust.

'What?'

'Get it – get it out of me. Right now, Kage! I don't want it. _Get it out!'_

Yashiro took a step backwards. He didn't know where to go. How to escape himself. Kageyama held out his hands bracingly and stood up, suddenly scared too. Scared for Yashiro and everything he had been through. It was a side of Yashiro that Kageyama had never seen before.

'Listen,' he said, as soothingly as he could. 'I – my clinic doesn't have those kinds of facilities. But I can give you the number of a colleague of mine. His practice isn't far from here. I can get you in without an appointment. Okay?'

Yashiro stared, breathing heavily, his arm in a sling and his eyes utterly lost.

For the first time in his life, Kageyama felt the urge to put his arms around Yashiro and lie to him and tell him everything would be fine. For the first time, he felt as though he himself was to blame for all of it, even though he knew, rationally, there wasn't a single part of it he could have helped.

* * *

No one saw Yashiro for a few days after that. Misumi took over what he could and Nanahara scrambled to make up the rest. Misumi alone knew why, and even his knowledge was based on a quick, mumbled phone call in which Yashiro told him he had gotten pregnant and had taken care of it. He was fine, and would be ready to come back to work in a few days.

'Yashiro –' Misumi had said in shock.

The line went dead. After that, Yashiro didn't answer his phone or his front door for anyone.

So Doumeki waited outside it.

Nanahara had caved to his instincts, rather than his voice of reason, and called Doumeki to tell him that Yashiro had been a no-show for a while and that even Misumi looked like he was worried about him. Nanahara's instincts kicked off Doumeki's own, which were a lot stronger where Yashiro was concerned, and Doumeki left for Yashiro's flat without needing any further incentive.

Yashiro knew who it was when he knocked, even before Doumeki hesitantly called, 'Boss?' He knew that, at some point, Doumeki would be in his life again. And although he was mildly surprised it was Doumeki who had come to him and not the other way round – although he was grateful he had at least been spared that humiliation – it didn't alleviate the grisliness he had been carrying inside him for days.

So he stayed in bed.

Every Omega had had the procedure at least once in their lives. It was quick and almost painless and no longer carried the stigma it once did. It was part and parcel of a world where passions took hold, paying little mind to reason.

Yashiro's infertility had protected him until then. Collars, suppressants, condoms. Infertility and impotence. Somehow, in spite of all that, life had happened. As though the powerful, pulsing connection that drew Yashiro and Doumeki to one another had found nowhere else to go and had concentrated in something like that.

It was dangerous. It was volatile. And now, thanks to the bite on his neck, it was inescapable. He couldn't even fathom the thought of sleeping with any other man.

His instincts continued to inform him that Doumeki was there, always there, sitting on the other side of the door. He knew that the sound of the door being unlocked was all it would take.

And so on the second day, a full day and night after Doumeki first knocked, Yashiro watched, as though from outside, as he went to the door and unlocked it. He turned and took a few steps back into his apartment, hearing the door quietly open and close behind him. He imagined Doumeki standing there, a few feet away, and he hated how the thought made his body flush with a heady cocktail of relief and anticipation.

Doumeki's eyes travelled up the length of Yashiro's body. He wore a loose navy robe and his hair was unkempt. He could tell, without seeing, that Yashiro's fringe fell into his eyes again, like it did the last time he saw him. He longed to touch him. But he had to hold his ground for as long as he possibly could.

'Boss –' he began.

'What?' Yashiro suddenly said. A single word that was quiet but delivered in a kind of snap; a kind of harshness that was enough to make Doumeki flinch. Yashiro turned. 'What could you possibly have to say? Have you spent a whole day thinking it up? It'd better be good.'

Doumeki stared, at a loss.

'Or maybe you didn't come to talk at all,' Yashiro said, hearing that he was losing control of his voice and his words again. He gestured openly with his left hand, his right hand remaining useless in its sling. 'Maybe you've just come to fuck me. To claim what's yours. Is that why you're here?'

'No, Boss,' Doumeki finally managed, feeling his self-loathing claim him again, though it had never really left him since the morning he awoke to find Yashiro was gone. He tried to fight the high, cruel inner voice that told him he was just like his father. 'I'm... sorry, Boss.'

 _'I'm sorry, Boss,'_ Yashiro mocked. 'That's all you do. Apologising is all you ever do. _I'm sorry, I'm sorry._ Are you also sorry you got me pregnant?'

Doumeki felt like he had been punched in the gut.

Yashiro's eyes were manic again, like Doumeki had only seen on rare occasions. It made his insides feel cold.

'Are you sorry that I got rid of it?' An awful, twisted smile. Eyes that were still glassed-over with an emotion that neither of them could identify. And then his voice broke. 'Are you sorry because it was… because it was ours? Are you sorry because it could have been... anything.'

Heart pounding, still struggling to process the two bombs that had gone off in quick succession, Doumeki covered the distance between them and pulled Yashiro against him, eyes wide and fixed on the far wall. He was surprised that Yashiro didn't relent. As though his own words had winded him.

Yashiro himself didn't understand, at first, what he meant when he had said, _it_ _could have been anything._ Then he realised.

What had happened to him had scared him more than anything else in his life. His stepfather had threatened to impregnate him time and time again, to make Yashiro bear his child and reveal his depravity to his mother and the whole world; a rough, constant slew of words that it took Yashiro years to figure out were nothing more than threats made to heighten his stepfather's sexual thrill. But it still frightened him when it finally became real, even thirty years later. And so he had expelled it. He had removed it from his disgusting, marred, filthy body because it didn't stand a chance with him. He didn't know if he was disgusted more at it or himself.

But over the past few days, he realised that the thing that had scared him so much could have _been_ so much. It could have been so many things. Things that didn't have to frighten him. It could have been tall, like Doumeki, but with Yashiro's smile and wit. It could have been a girl, and she might have been brilliant and precocious and she might have doted on her strong, silent Alpha father.

Tears again. For some reason, it felt like he had cried in Doumeki's arms countless times, even though this was the very first.

'Are you… are you sorry for that?' he demanded, his words muffled in Doumeki's shoulder. 'Are you sorry for…?'

Doumeki was sorry for all of it. And Yashiro was too, but neither could express what it was they had lost, precisely.

All Doumeki knew was that it didn't matter. It didn't matter as long as Yashiro was his and as long as he could be there to nurse all of Yashiro's scars, just as Yashiro had unknowingly done for him. He couldn't think of how to say it.

But he had to try.

'We're bonded now,' he said, his voice low and somewhat unsteady. 'We're s–soul bonded.'

He hated the fact that his words were hesitant when the feelings behind them weren't hesitant at all. He was frustrated because he knew _why_ the words were hesitant; he had heard them before and never once, in his wildest dreams, thought he could ever apply them to himself. He never had a reference point for all that they meant. How could he have known that such simple, alien words could capture a feeling as golden and heavy as this? This sense that he had finally come home.

'We're bonded now,' he repeated, more firmly. He gently drew his fingers along his mark. 'And I'm never leaving you again, Boss.'

Yashiro pulled back and looked at him. His eyes, in that moment, were unreadable again, but Doumeki felt them cut through him as though trying to seek out the lie.

'I'm never leaving you,' Doumeki repeated, wondering if he was saying the right thing or completely the wrong thing. 'I'm –'

 _I'm going to take care of you. I'm going to protect you. I'm going to keep all other men away from you. I'm going to fuck you through every single one of your heats. I'm going to make you come countless times, and you'll cry out for me, and I'll hold you afterwards and touch your face and your hair for as long as I want. And you'll laugh in my arms and I'll be the luckiest man alive._

Yashiro couldn't think of a single thing to say. The emotion, whatever emotion it was, rolled from his gut through his chest and became caught in his throat. Soul bond. He wanted to laugh and cry.

Doumeki kissed him then and Yashiro frowned slightly as he felt the heat of Doumeki's tongue in his mouth. The warmth of his lips. A hint of stubble. He folded into him. He felt Doumeki's huge hands on his back, moving often to the mark on his neck. His mark. He shivered.

It happened slowly. Yashiro's hold around Doumeki's shoulders and back tightened. It was the same thing Doumeki had experienced long before they forged their physical bond. That sense of helplessness and hollowness was replaced by something whole, and real. Simply by feeling out the contours of his own body as it felt when pressed against Doumeki's, feeling his own breath on Doumeki's skin, Yashiro came into himself. He realised that his old demons, the ones that only showed up when he was weakest, suddenly didn't have as much room. And suddenly Doumeki had lifted him up, wrapped his legs around Doumeki's waist, and Yashiro found he had surrendered completely even before Doumeki took any steps towards the bedroom.

Doumeki knew Yashiro was in no state to do anything, either physically or mentally. All he wanted to do, all he did, was lay Yashiro down on the white sheets, like an artist putting colour on canvas just to see it there, just to know it was there by his own hand.

Meanwhile, Yashiro was realising, slowly, that he had been right before; it was still a kind of powerlessness. Being beholden to someone, having someone stare at him like Doumeki was staring at him, allowing nothing to remain hidden, even the simple fact of being half of a whole – all of it was terrifying. All of it weakened him, just as he knew it would.

But the power that he felt then, in his surrender, in his love for his Alpha, was still power. One that rushed to his head as strongly as any heat.

* * *

It always happened slowly, as Yashiro began to see. Some things did, anyway. The important things. He had wrapped his mouth around Doumeki's soft cock within minutes of meeting him, and yet they shared their first kiss only a week ago. And Yashiro had only slowly come to discover the parts of him that had been empty – the parts he had tried to ignore and would be filled with no warning by the traumas of his childhood – those parts had been filled completely, and cleanly, by Doumeki. By the large man of few words and many secrets.

After Yashiro unlocked his front door and Doumeki came in, a strange few days followed. Neither of them left the apartment. Calls from Misumi and Nanahara and Kageyama went ignored.

Long hours would pass in which neither of them would speak. Yashiro would prop his head on his arm and stare at Doumeki. At the precise structure of his cheekbones and jawline. Doumeki would feel caught in his gaze, pleased and nervous at the same time, wondering if it was a look of discontent or appraisal. Yashiro rarely smiled in those first few days. And Doumeki had no idea how he could bring it about again. He longed to see Yashiro smile. Hear him laugh. At night, Doumeki would guiltily stroke the back of Yashiro's neck and feel a strange desolation, wondering again if he had made a huge mistake.

But he learned, slowly, that Yashiro simply needed time. Things within Yashiro were being unstitched, and other things being stitched back together. He was reconciling memories of his own tiny, bound hands against a weathered tatami mat with the raw, silent power of a soul bond. He was struggling to understand how a man like his stepfather and a man like Doumeki could both be Alphas, and how they could both reside on the same small blue planet.

And eventually, piece by piece, Yashiro came back to him. A few days later, Yashiro's right hand stirred again, enough that Doumeki saw the index finger tremble very slightly. He lifted the hand to his mouth and kissed it. Yashiro's thumb twitched and stroked his lips. Doumeki held back tears and he glanced up to see Yashiro smiling gently.

And Yashiro laughed that same day when Doumeki unknowingly placed an aluminium-lined container in the microwave and caused a small electric explosion.

'You're useless,' Yashiro observed as he carefully unplugged the microwave.

Doumeki had never been more grateful for his culinary failures.

Later that evening, Yashiro lay in his arms, again quiet and serious.

'I'm infertile and you're impotent,' he murmured. 'So of course I'd get pregnant.'

A small pause where Doumeki felt a lump rise to his throat. He tried to imagine all that Yashiro had gone through by himself. He wondered if there was anything he could do, anything either of them could do, to make up for what had happened.

Yashiro sighed and smiled faintly.

'Misumi and Amou aren't the only ones making history.'

Doumeki had no idea what he was talking about, but he was relieved to see Yashiro smiling again.

* * *

Yashiro's first heat was a nightmare for them both. He had taken enough suppressants to take down a stallion, but being near Doumeki had triggered his heat regardless. Doumeki clung to his back, unsure if he was holding Yashiro together or holding himself back, ignoring Yashiro's urgent demands for Doumeki to tear off his clothes and fuck him senseless. Teeth clenched, Doumeki reminded himself in a sort of mantra that Yashiro was still recovering from the operation. He rubbed himself against Yashiro's back and made Yashiro come many times using hand-jobs, but nothing was ever enough. Three days later, Yashiro's heat mercifully subsided.

To everyone else's relief, Yashiro returned to work not long after that. Doumeki went with him.

Yashiro's second heat the following month couldn't have been any different from the repression and agony of the first. Yashiro simply kicked everyone out of the office and Doumeki locked the door.

* * *

'I never thought I'd see the day,' Misumi declared wanly. 'The infamous Omega Young Leader and his bonded Alpha bodyguard. They're talking about you two even in headquarters, you know.' He reached for a cigarette with a huff. 'What the hell is the world coming to?'

'I asked myself that the day they invented suppressants,' Yashiro said, lighting up at the same time. 'Takes all the fun out of life, if you ask me.'

Nanahara and Sugimoto noticed the look he threw Doumeki, who was gathering the tea things on the bureau near the door. They made a face at one another. Taking suppressants was something they sorely wished Boss would do more often, especially now that his heats came on without any regularity, with a strength that disturbed an inordinately large percentage of Betas.

In fact, Nanahara was feeling both brave and exasperated enough to bring it up. He waited until Misumi finished up his business with Yashiro and left.

He took a deep breath.

'Boss?'

'Mm?'

'We think you should start going on your meds again.'

Yashiro was mildly surprised.

'What for?'

 _We're sick of how often we have to hear you getting ploughed by your fucking bodyguard._

'They've hired a few more Alphas downstairs,' Nanahara replied, somewhat stiffly. 'Last time, we ended up having to knock some guy out to stop him from breaking down the door.'

Yashiro sat at his desk and leaned back, looking unconcerned. In fact, his mind wandered down a different path.

'Such a pity that even the thought of fucking them makes me want to throw up.' He flicked another glance at Doumeki who was taking away the tea tray. 'No need to look so smug over there.'

Doumeki's expression was as deadpan as ever. But all those in the room knew him well, and they could tell that he was, indeed, very happy at the thought.

'Boss,' Nanahara tried again, realising the conversation had derailed before it had even started. 'Can we talk about –?'

Doumeki sensed it first without even having to turn. But Nanahara saw it too, and it cut him off mid-sentence. Sugimoto sensed it from near the door. He had a strategic advantage there; he bolted before anything could be asked of him.

Yashiro was suddenly sweating and gasping, heat filling his head, and his gaze fixed on Doumeki who was at his side in a heartbeat.

The eight Alphas elsewhere in the building suddenly dropped what they were doing. Many Betas, Nanahara included, felt a little hot under the collar. It was a particularly strong heat. It always was whenever the bodyguard was around.

Some of the more resistant Betas observed their peers in slight amusement. Team managers sighed in frustration when their best workers suddenly ran for stairwells.

'Nanahara,' Yashiro gasped, even as Doumeki heaved him out of the chair and onto the desk, lips already on Yashiro's neck and hands unbuttoning his vest. 'Nana… hara… door.'

Nanahara, who realised he had lingered just a few seconds too long, felt his heart sink. He spun around and saw that Sugimoto had abandoned him.

'Oh, for fuck's – you're going to make me guard the door _again?'_

Doumeki barely had time to feel sorry for Nanahara, and his face didn't register any shift in emotions anyway. And Yashiro, for his part, could only moan.

Slightly flushed, Nanahara grumbled and turned and left. He sat in front of the door and took out his gun, deciding he was in a bad enough mood to actually shoot any fucker who managed to make it past the barricaded stairwell doors.

For Christmas that year, Doumeki bought him a state-of-the-art pair of earplugs and Yashiro bought him a year's subscription to Juggs. So whenever he was stuck on door duty, Nanahara begrudgingly alternated between the two.


	2. The Godfather (Part I)

_**Author's note** **:** The previous chapter was mostly me applying Omegaverse to the canon chapters that we have to date. From this point on, it's mostly me going rogue with headcanon, so the pacing etc will be slightly different. Hope you still enjoy! Xx_

 _Also I did another sketch for the start of this chapter - the bite rhat forged the soul bond between Yashiro and Doumeki. Again please head to Ao3 if you're curious! :)_

* * *

The school rooftop was a cliché, but one they had made their own. They weren't there to rebel. They weren't there to fight or to fuck, though Yashiro certainly wouldn't have minded the latter. They were there simply because they had each found something in the other.

Yashiro lay on his back on the raised edge. Kageyama sat on the floor and spared him a glance.

'You shouldn't lean so heavily against the fence.'

Yashiro smiled and didn't move. He drew his fingers across the chain-link fence that protected him from a gruesome death.

'You'd save me if it breaks, right? All dramatic, like in the movies?'

Kageyama grunted. 'Don't count on it.'

They both knew they had acquired a reputation by then. An Alpha and an Omega sneaking up to the rooftop together was the perfect foundation for many rumours. But Yashiro revelled in the rumours. Once or twice he even thought about wearing a square bandage on the back of his neck, just to see his schoolmates blush. And Kageyama, for one, couldn't care less about rumours. Ever since his father died, med school was the only thing on his mind.

He drew out his bento and cast another sideways glance at Yashiro, who stared up at the sky with his usual absent smile.

'So you still want to be an actor?' Kageyama said.

'What?'

'When we graduate. You said you wanted to be an actor. And you said something about movies just now, so I thought... I don't know.'

'Oh, right,' Yashiro said carelessly. 'On second thought, it's kind of unrealistic, isn't it?'

Kageyama made a noncommittal noise, though he was secretly relieved. Perhaps Yashiro was beginning to take his future seriously –

'What I really want,' Yashiro said, feigning decisiveness, 'is to be a runway model in Prague.'

Kageyama faltered. Then he sighed and fished out his chopsticks.

'What's with that reaction?' Yashiro pressed, grinning. 'I think I'd look pretty good in one of those three-piece suits.' He extended the fantasy, imagining himself in a vest. 'I'd be the first ever Omega model hired by Armani and –'

'What happened to your wrist?'

'Huh?'

Yashiro glanced down to see Kageyama staring at the arm that was hanging off the side of the ledge. Just beyond his left cuff was the rope burn that was left over from two days ago. It was one of the worst bruises yet. Yashiro's skin had chafed against the rough bindings for a whole hour.

'Oh. Same guy as before. I told you about him, right? The guy from the Yakuza.'

Kageyama stared at his wrist for a few more seconds. Yashiro suddenly felt the need to cover it up. It was a strange feeling, one that bordered on shame, and he didn't like it at all.

So instead, he leaned the opposite way.

'Want to touch it?' he said lightly.

Kageyama didn't reply. Yashiro felt a strange thrill at the hint of red that touched Kageyama's ears. For a moment or two, he felt the urge to push some more. But he let it go. Kageyama had stopped touching his scars ever since the day Yashiro told him about his stepfather. They had left the nurse's office behind a long time ago.

He brought his wrist up to his face and analysed the burn. He remembered the guy's long fingers and scratchy goatee. A precursor for Ryuuzaki, though he didn't know it at the time.

'He practically bit my collar off,' Yashiro remembered. 'It looks like a dog mauled it. I have to get a new one now.'

Yashiro's gaze landed on Kageyama again. He stared at his face in profile. His stern, serious eyebrows. His intent gaze. Silent strength.

The wind gently rattled the chain link fence and sent a few dry leaves scattering. It tugged at Yashiro's hair.

'I'd let you bite me, you know.'

His tone was the same as it was earlier, when he was teasing. But it was also slightly different. Yashiro heard the difference. He didn't know if Kageyama did.

'What do you think?' He kept his voice casual and sarcastic, even as his pulse picked up. 'We'd be bonded for life. I wouldn't be able to sleep with anyone else. Sounds like a pretty good deal for you, right?'

Kageyama flicked him a look. His expression was the same.

'Like you'd ever let anyone do that.'

Yashiro stared at his face in profile for a moment longer. Then he turned his gaze back to the sky and let his hand dangle again. He leaned a little harder against the fence.

They were there because they had found something in one another. Kageyama found someone who didn't judge him. Someone who didn't think him strange for his fetish or his silence or his gruffness.

And Yashiro found something that hurt him almost as much as it comforted him.

'Yeah,' he said with a quiet laugh.

He could hear it; that his own laugh sounded forced. But Kageyama couldn't.

* * *

Doumeki's jaw was locked as they got out out of the car and walked into the clinic. He had intuited, from the very start, that Kageyama Kanji occupied a unique place in his boss' mind. Yashiro flirted with him openly, like he flirted with everyone else. But Doumeki saw what happened to him afterwards. The quietness. The deflation.

And, strangely enough, his jealousy of Kageyama had only grown in the weeks since he had made Yashiro his.

He stood by the door, his hands in fists, as Kageyama took Yashiro's arm out of its cast. Yashiro rolled his sleeve up, partway, and Kageyama rolled it up further, past Yashiro's elbow. Doumeki's pulse picked up and he tried to focus his gaze elsewhere.

Yashiro noticed and pursed his lips in amusement.

'Try doing this,' Kageyama said, touching the tip of his index finger to his thumb.

Yashiro focused and tried. His thumb quivered and his finger twitched.

'Not bad, right?'

'It's improving,' Kageyama agreed. He moved his cigarette to the other side of his mouth and gingerly felt along the tendons in Yashiro's arm. 'Any feeling here?'

'Yep.'

Kageyama was surprised. 'Really?'

Yashiro grinned. 'I always feel something when you touch me, Kage.'

Doumeki's fists clenched tighter. Kageyama gave an exasperated sigh.

'Would you stop fucking around? I'm not in the mood.'

'I _have_ stopped fucking around. I'm only fucking him now.'

Yashiro tilted his head to indicate Doumeki. Kageyama looked around in slight surprise.

'What are you talking about?'

'Don't be coy. I know you've seen the mark on my neck.' Yashiro crossed his legs and leaned back on his good hand. 'It's his.'

It took a few more seconds for the words to sink in. Kageyama stared between Doumeki's poker face and Yashiro's familiar, sanguine smile.

Ever since he had seen the mark on Yashiro's neck, Kageyama had been curious about whose it might be. The bodyguard never once occurred to him. In fact, Kageyama had always been under the impression that Doumeki was a Beta. He then groaned internally when he remembered that Kuga had predicted something along these lines. Kuga would undoubtedly lord his foresight over Kageyama until kingdom come.

He also remembered, vividly, the day he had told Yashiro he was pregnant. They had been in that same room. He remembered the fear and the disgust in his eyes. He struggled to put it all together and realised he couldn't.

All he knew was that he felt distinctly uncomfortable under Doumeki's gaze, for absolutely no reason that he could think of.

So he sighed and covered Yashiro's arm back up before writing a prescription for painkillers.

As he scribbled on his pad, he also slowly worked up the courage to bring up a somewhat awkward topic. He was a professional, after all. He had to wade through whatever discomfort and innuendo awaited around the corner.

'How long has it been?' he asked when he turned back to Yashiro with the prescription in hand.

'How long has what been?'

'Since the bond was made.'

'Oh. Two weeks, I think.'

'Any changes in… behaviour?'

'Behaviour?'

'Libido. And… urges. Unscheduled heats. That sort of thing.'

It occurred to him that a real professional would have asked the bodyguard-cum-bonded-Alpha-mate to wait outside as he asked Yashiro such questions. He realised he had gotten too used to playing the part of the go-to doctor for the Yakuza, which meant the rules were frequently bent or broken or bleeding from multiple bullet wounds.

'Oh, we're fucking like rabbits, if that's what you mean,' said Yashiro smoothly. 'Do you want details?'

'In the first three months after a bond is made,' Kageyama said, swiftly ignoring him, 'you'll be eight to ten times more likely to conceive than at any other time in your life.'

The word 'conceive' made Yashiro's smile vanish. Doumeki glanced up.

'So you have to be careful,' Kageyama went on. 'Especially when you're in heat.'

'Yeah, yeah,' Yashiro intoned, though his tone was noticeably more grounded.

He met Kageyama's eye and knew they were both thinking of the last time Kageyama had seen him there. The scattered tray of equipment.

'It's actually rare for bonded pairs to avoid getting pregnant in those first three months,' Kageyama went on stiffly. 'So if you want to be extra cautious, it might be a good idea to separate for a while, just until you're less –'

'No,' Doumeki said suddenly, before he could stop himself.

Both Yashiro and Kageyama glanced round. Yashiro's heart skipped a beat.

Doumeki felt somewhat foolish for his outburst. But he stood by it. And he wouldn't stand for Kageyama, of all people, to be the one to drive them apart.

'I'm –' Kageyama said, feeling suddenly like he had lost his footing. 'I'm just saying it might be something to consider. Given…'

He trailed off, but all three were thinking the same thing. Given what happened. Doumeki thought about Yashiro folding into his arms, crying. He blinked, confused for a moment. He didn't want that, never again. But he also couldn't fathom the thought of being away from Yashiro for even a moment.

And neither could Yashiro, though he would never admit it.

'Thanks for the advice, Kage,' he said, his voice assuming its usual brazenness. He flashed Kageyama a smile. 'I'll bug you for more painkillers soon.'

'Please don't.'

Before Doumeki turned to follow Yashiro out of the clinic, Kageyama wondered if he was imagining it or if he was again on the receiving end of one of Doumeki's glares. He listened as both pairs of footsteps receded.

 _I'd let you bite me, you know._

The words came at him from out of nowhere, accompanied by a faint memory of the school roof. He frowned. A chain-link fence and a rope burn on a pale wrist.

It was from so long ago that he couldn't even be sure if he had fabricated it. The words were in Yashiro's voice, but it didn't sound like something Yashiro would ever say. Not seriously, anyway. And surely not to him.

A loud buzzing in his pocket pulled him out of his thoughts. He drew out his phone and discovered that Kuga had replaced his own caller ID with 'Your Better Half'. His frown went away and his lips twitched in something dangerously close to a smile.

* * *

Yashiro knew it was a mark that would never go away. And yet it still caught him off-guard every now and then, even two months later. As he washed his hair, his fingers would brush against it. The indents left in his skin by his Alpha.

After showering, he stood in front of the sink and automatically angled his face and neck before the mirror, trying to see something he knew was impossible to see without the aid of a second mirror.

There was a quick rap on the door and Doumeki came in. He had left his shirt to dry on the towel rack after washing it by hand in the sink.

Bare-chested, he squeezed past Yashiro and reached for his shirt. Yashiro's gaze travelled lazily over the smooth, rolling muscles of his arms and chest, enjoying the way his defined abdominal muscles always seemed to guide the eye – or the hand, or the tongue, or whatever – further down towards the secret in his trousers. The raw, teeming power of his body, strength and size and solidity, all culminating in a submissively averted gaze and a mumbled, 'Sorry, Boss.' He only passed behind Yashiro for a moment and in that time, he managed to make Yashiro feel small again.

In the two months since the bond was made, it had been physically draining for either of them to be far away from the other for too long. Sometimes Yashiro thought about Kageyama's advice that they should separate until the three-month window was closed. He wondered if such a thing was even physically possible.

Doumeki glanced up to see Yashiro absently feeling out the mark on the back of his neck. He felt a small stab of concern.

'Does it… hurt?'

Yashiro blinked and focused, only then realising what he was doing. He lowered his arm.

'No.'

Doumeki slowly approached the sink again, shirt in hand. Yashiro saw his eyes focus on the mark.

'I kind of wish it did, though,' Yashiro added. His lips curled into a slight smile. 'I feel like it should, at least a little. Maybe you did it wrong.'

Their eyes met in the mirror. A flicker of uncertainty crossed Doumeki's features and made Yashiro chuckle.

'It was a joke, stupid.'

'Oh.'

Doumeki was more distracted than relieved. He was suddenly aware of the fact that Yashiro stood before him with only a towel wrapped around his hips. Strong, tapered muscles that reminded him of a large cat. Smooth, flawless skin. Flawless, that is, except for the mark; two gentle arcs of dents which had assumed a permanent pale mauve tint. The closest thing to a tattoo he had.

Without realising it, Doumeki had moved closer. Yashiro felt his breath on the back of his neck. That was enough to make him hang his head very slightly and and he felt goosebumps break out over his skin. He suddenly wanted to see Doumeki fully aroused, just like that, right behind him at the bathroom sink.

But Doumeki caught himself in time. They were already running late for work. And they had had sex three times the previous night. It would do him some good to learn to control himself.

Yashiro sensed Doumeki's impending withdrawal even before he began to move away. He swiftly reached behind him and grasped Doumeki's cock through his pants.

He was rewarded by the low, surprised grunt.

'Boss –'

'Don't start things if you're not going to finish them.'

He moved his hand up and hooked his fingers around one of Doumeki's belt loops. A single tug pulled Doumeki forwards, pushing Yashiro against the sink. Yashiro watched in the mirror, his pulse suddenly loud and erratic, as Doumeki loomed hugely behind him, moving his hands to either side of the sink and trapping Yashiro between his bare arms.

His eyes bored into Yashiro's for a long time before he turned his face to gently bite the curve of Yashiro's neck. He ground his cock, now half-hard, against Yashiro's ass.

It didn't take long for the towel to be on the floor, Doumeki's cock to be freed from his pants and for him to slip in with ease, Yashiro's arousal oozing out visibly from around Doumeki's cock.

'Oh... fuck,' Yashiro moaned quietly.

Doumeki breathed out in a low, long exhale, looking down between their bodies. Yashiro's flesh whitened where Doumeki's fingers clenched it. He pushed Yashiro's ass cheeks apart and up, staring at the fluid that leaked out of him, staring at the vibrations that shuddered through him with each plunge.

Yashiro leaned forwards, tears already dotting his eyes. He hoped his body would never get accustomed to Doumeki's size.

'Yes! Go faster! Ugh, deeper!'

When Doumeki obliged, Yashiro moaned and fell further over the sink.

Then he realised.

'Wait –'

Doumeki's thrusts were hard and merciless. Yashiro was in danger of losing his senses completely.

'Doumeki, stop… condom –'

The words registered in the back of Doumeki's head. He slowed down his pace, struggling to control himself. That was when he remembered they had used up the last of their huge stash the previous night.

'We don't have any more.'

'Shit,' Yashiro hissed.

They both panted and squirmed, Doumeki still inside him, trying to keep still and bracing himself to pull out, Yashiro still emitting small moans. The mirror was completely fogged up.

'Boss,' Doumeki murumured, his voice hoarse. He leaned down until he was pressed against Yashiro's back. He licked his mark. He trailed kisses from Yashiro's shoulder down his back.

And Yashiro, his mind feeling just as clouded-over as the mirror, rolled his hips back slightly; a devious move that effortlessly pulled Doumeki's cock into him again. Doumeki felt the pull and the contractions of Yashiro's passage around his dick. He grunted again in surprise.

'Boss?'

'Just don't... come inside,' Yashiro gasped. 'Three months… Kageyama said – _ah!'_

Doumeki had delivered a single, merciless plunge, inspired by the anger he felt over hearing Yashiro say Kageyama's name. Yashiro cried out in surprise, face flushed, and he craned his neck to look over his shoulder.

'Idiot… listen!'

'I won't come inside,' Doumeki said through gritted teeth.

Yashiro tried to focus. A shiver ran through him over how strained Doumeki's voice was. How much he was holding back.

'If you do...' Yashiro muttered weakly, scrambling for a threat. 'I'll fire you… again…'

Doumeki suddenly pulled out and turned him around. Yashiro felt his breath catch in his throat again when he faced Doumeki's wide shoulders and the taut muscles of his chest. Doumeki lifted his left leg and wrapped it around himself, pulling him forwards slightly, looking for a way back in. Yashiro threw his arm back against the sink for support.

Sometimes it was this, this need to feel their bodies coming together powerfully, over and over. Other times, like the previous night, the focus shifted to the connection; the simple fact of the most intimate part of Doumeki being inside the most intimate part of Yashiro. There, Doumeki had taken his time, moved slowly and deliberately, without any jarring movements, so that Yashiro could feel every inch of Doumeki's cock and Doumeki could relish the heat and wetness and tightness of every inch of Yashiro's passage. He would bend low at the same time and bite or suck at Yashiro's skin.

Other times, it was about domination. It was Doumeki slipping into the Alpha role that had been passed to him, in his blood, since the earliest times of their evolution. Claiming his Omega completely, in acts and contortions that he couldn't have come up with when he was in his right mind.

Now, however, was not one of those times. Now, against the sink, they only had time for a rough, hard fuck where it was enough for Doumeki to feel Yashiro cling to him and feel the mesmerising resistance and give of his body as he pounded, and it was enough for Yashio to feel the force of his mate's body slamming into his.

'Ugh… ugh, yes! Ah, coming… _coming!'_

Doumeki braced his head on Yashiro's shoulder as Yashiro came, shuddering mutely when it happened, spurting over his stomach. It was always unreal for Doumeki in that moment, when Yashiro body gripped him so hard it was almost painful; contracting and pulling and sucking, trying to send as much of Doumeki's seed into his womb as possible.

But Doumeki wouldn't let it. They had been careful ever since the harrowing results of that first time. So when Doumeki felt that pressure rising in his balls, he pulled out, replacing the heat of Yashiro's body with the far less satisfying heat of his own hand. Still, it was more than enough to have Boss before him, panting, spent, only barely holding himself upright against the sink. The come that Doumeki had fucked out of Yashiro was sliding down his stomach.

When Doumeki breathed heavily and began to come, Yashiro managed to push him back a few steps to the edge of the bathtub where Doumeki half-stumbled and sat down. Yashiro dropped to his knees and took Doumeki's cock out of his hand and into his mouth.

Doumeki perched on the edge of the tub and groaned, clenching Yashiro's hair, seeing gold strands sliding between his fingers.

Just like old times, Yashiro thought, smiling even as he sucked. It was almost indistinguishable from that day so many months ago, down to the fact that they were on the edge of the tub and Doumeki was still partially clothed and Yashiro knelt on floor before him, naked.

They were the same, except for the fact that Doumeki was hard. And except for the fact that they were bonded for life.

For life, Yashiro thought again. His stomach gave a little lurch, like it sometimes did.

* * *

And he carried that feeling with him for the rest of the day.

 _What do you think? We'd be bonded for life. I wouldn't be able to sleep with anyone else. Sounds like a pretty good deal for you, right?_

A future he had envisioned only once, with the bated breath of a kid who was far more naive than he wanted to admit. A kid who still hoped for things beyond his reach.

It was the first and last time he had ever even considered it. And now suddenly, here he was. Living it.

Headquarters had called a meeting that morning. Misumi noticed over the course of those few hours that Yashiro attracted less antipathy than before. Even Hirata had spoken to him politely, if stiffly. The few looks that came his way were mostly those of respect, laced with a telling sort of guilt that Misumi could read through in a heartbeat. Yashiro had a strange glow about him, ever since the day he had been marked.

 _He's proven that he's smart. And has guts. If you want to get the executive staff on board, he'll have to stand alone and take control of a group himself._

The Kaichou's words still echoed somewhere in Misumi's mind as he watched Yashiro, an Omega among Alphas.

But that day, Misumi also noticed Yashiro's vacant gaze. At times, it felt to Misumi like Yashiro was no longer with them.

* * *

It had been nerve-wracking for Doumeki in the first few days after he quietly stepped into Yashiro's apartment and closed the door behind him. He still remembered how badly he wanted to take Yashiro's pain for his own, how much he regretted having left him alone even if it was Yashiro who had pushed him away. He remembered his anxiety as he waited for Yashiro to come back to him. His guilt over the fact that he had marked Yashiro, almost without his consent, even though some voice deep inside, a voice that seemed to know better, told him that Yashiro was fated for him and had wanted to be bonded as badly as Doumeki did.

But as anxious as he had been, he was still comforted in the feel of Yashiro between his arms. He had waited for Yashiro to come back to him, and he did.

They could feel the distance between them when they were apart, even when Yashiro was called away to a meeting a few floors away where no underlings were allowed, or when Doumeki went back to his flat to grab a few extra clothes and race back to Yashiro's. It was a desire that was only quenched when he could smell Yashiro' scent again. For over two months, it had been the same. The silent power of a soul bond.

And so Doumeki wasn't at all prepared when Yashiro told him out of the blue that he would be going away for a while, and that Doumeki wasn't to come with him.

Doumeki, who was at the stove, heard the words ringing in his ears. He turned to see Yashiro place his phone on the counter. He stared, trying to understand.

'Where are you going?'

'Hokkaido,' Yashiro said with a sigh that belied a small tangle of emotions. 'Misumi wants me to meet the Kaichou.'

Doumeki was surprised. That was quite a privilege indeed, one that seemed like it heralded more significant things. Things that Misumi had been gently and not-so-gently steering Yashiro towards. Things like a position at headquarters. Yashiro seemed aware of it all; Doumeki saw that he was preoccupied.

'Why Hokkaido?' he asked.

'The Kaichou's been moved to a hospice there. He's on his last legs. '

And then Doumeki honed in on the most important part of all.

'Why can't I come?'

'Misumi was explicit about that,' Yashiro said, a small smile cutting through his preoccupation. 'Since I go into heat left and right when you're around. It'll be awkward if it happens in front of the Godfather, don't you think?'

He had used the English word when he made the reference but Doumeki continued to stare at him blankly.

'You've never seen the movie?'

'Who'll protect you?'

'I'm taking Sugimoto.' Yashiro headed down the hallway towards his bedroom. 'He'll be plenty. Only the Kaichou's inner circle and Misumi know he's in Hokkaido. It'll be even safer than here.'

Doumeki followed automatically, still absently holding the wooden spoon.

'I still… I want to come with you.'

'You can't.'

Doumeki flailed, trying to put words to what suddenly felt like the most egregious injustice in the world.

'I said I'd never leave you,' he said finally, hearing how weak his words sounded.

Yashiro wanted to laugh.

 _'I'm_ leaving _you,'_ he said instead, almost patiently. 'There's a difference.' He smiled, a small cruel smile, in the face of Doumeki's hurt. 'Would you stop looking like a kicked puppy? It's only for a week. In the meantime, just keep out of trouble. Do what Nanahara tells you –'

'Is this because of him?' Doumeki said, still struggling to wrap his head around Yashiro's casual mention that he would be gone for a whole week.

'Who, Nanahara?' said Yashiro, confused.

'Kageyama,' Doumeki said, his voice a little strained. 'He said we should separate. And now you're…'

Doumeki trailed off. Yashiro lifted his eyebrows. A tense pause ensued.

'You're _still_ jealous of him?'

'Is he the reason?' Doumeki persisted, with the faintest flush.

'No, you idiot. I've already told you why.'

By then Yashiro had turned his back on Doumeki and was rifling through his wardrobe and ignoring his own pulse. He wondered how much longer he could keep it up. He was distinctly frustrated by the fact that Doumeki was able to vent his feelings like that, where Yashiro had to keep them bottled. He had to pretend like the idea of being separated from Doumeki even for a week wasn't filling him with a strange, hollow dread.

'Bonded or not, we're both grown men,' he said, relieved to hear his voice, at least, continued to sound detached and sardonic. 'I can handle being away from you for a few days, for God's sake.'

'What if – what if you go into heat anyway?'

'I'll take my suppressants.'

There was another silence and Yashiro turned. Doumeki looked more upset than Yashiro had ever seen him before. It sparked a bizarre, conflicting set of emotions in him, in which guilt was plunged beneath others. Others like vindictive amusement, and even the smallest flicker of disgust. A flicker of his former self.

'Then again, maybe they won't work,' he said, his tone changing. 'Maybe I'll get swarmed by Alphas and you won't be around to stop them.'

It was a combination of everything; Yashiro's tone, his half-lidded gaze, the words themselves and the image they conjured…

'And maybe they'll pin me to the ground and tear off my clothes.'

...and the scent of him, his natural scent and cologne and hints of his arousal. Doumeki quickly began to lose control. Yashiro reached him and tilted his face up, leaning in close, to whisper in his ear.

'And maybe they'll take turns fucking me. And they'll bite me, over your bite, over and over. Until no one can see your mark anymore –'

From then on, thanks to Yashiro's carefully designed words, Doumeki was long gone. He became something else, something Yashiro had only seen in small snippets. Doumeki became every part the Alpha that his instincts told him to be. Ruthless and dominating and one-minded.

It was a thrill that Yashiro had known countless times before, each time his body was moulded by another, or by several others at once, until he didn't feel like he occupied his own body. But when it was Doumeki doing it, he realised he was still himself. He could feel it each time Doumeki's hands clenched too tightly, each time his teeth sank too deeply. He felt it when Doumeki roughly flipped him over, then bent low to bite him, hard, on the flesh of his ass, enough that Yashiro cried out in pain and gripped the sheets. He felt it when Doumeki straightened and delivered a loud, resounding slap with his open palm to the same place he had bitten. And Yashiro's tears leaked onto the sheets and he whimpered and he cried out again when Doumeki yanked his hair back and kept pounding. He felt everything; he was still inside himself and he relished it all. He relished the thought that even when Doumeki became just like the others, he was better than any of them had ever been.

In fact, it was Doumeki who suffered that time. He was the one who floated above himself, aware that he was making Yashiro his, in that moment, in the only way he knew how, and in a way that he wished he could distance himself from. He was almost afraid of the strength of his own desire to carve himself into Yashiro's flesh, make him feel how much Doumeki owned him, simply because he was scared about the thought of losing him.

He had retained just enough sense to pull out when he was close, groaning as he ejaculated over Yashiro's lower back.

And he felt the guilt creep up on him at the same time that Yashiro turned to face him, his face drenched in sweat, looking utterly exhausted. Exhausted enough to let Doumeki pull him close and hold his head to his chest.

Yashiro's body ached all over – a sweet, throbbing pain wherever Doumeki had bitten and gripped and pulled.

'I want to come with you,' Doumeki said quietly, in place of the apology he had intended.

Yashiro only closed his eyes, afraid that anything he said would give away the fact that he wanted the same. He felt distinctly ridiculous, even as he drifted off.

The following morning, Doumeki could only watch as Misumi, Amou and Sugimoto whisked Yashiro away. His half-smile and half-wave lingered in Doumeki's vision, even after Yashiro disappeared from view.

And in fact, that vision of Yashiro lingered even when he came back, pushing past the people who had stood behind him in the queue, pulled Doumeki forwards by his collar and caught his surprised lips in a kiss. That earlier, far-away vision of Yashiro remained because it seemed so much more real and likely than what Yashiro was doing in that moment. When Yashiro bit his bottom lip just a little too hard and drew back, Doumeki blinked and tried to catch up, unaware of the strangers who were staring, unaware of the way Nanahara audibly cringed behind them him or the way Misumi watched on incredulously ahead of them.

Yashiro's smile was back and it replaced the old vision in a heartbeat. This one, this new image of him, Doumeki was sure would never leave him. Yashiro smoothed Doumeki's lapel before turning and disappearing once more. Doumeki stared after his mate, his heart as sore as his bottom lip.

He went home nursing a deep and irrational grudge against the entire prefecture of Hokkaido.

* * *

On his way, he brushed past a man who had been watching the whole scene dispassionately. Perhaps if Doumeki had been less preoccupied, he would have noticed the somewhat conspicuous fact that he was wearing sunglasses indoors. As Doumeki and Nanahara headed for the parking lot, Sunglasses took out a phone and held it to his ear.

'Hokkaido,' he said, once the line picked up. 'And his Alpha's not going with him.'

On the other end of the line, Hirata absorbed the news and hung up.

* * *

Neither Yashiro nor Doumeki knew how difficult it would be. Doumeki was suddenly at a loss, learning firsthand how things as inane as geography and distance could claw at him so vindictively. He now understood why entire fields of psychology were dedicated to understanding the specific biology and chemistry of the bond between an Alpha and an Omega (and why more obtuse, less respected fields were dedicated to the controversial phenomenon of the soul bond), and still no one had come close to explaining it satisfactorily.

For Doumeki, whatever it was that was tying him to Yashiro was no longer a current that he simply needed to follow, one that would always lead him to Yashiro if he succumbed to it. It now felt more like a membrane that had been stretched too thin, stretching someplace he couldn't feel or see properly. And it hurt with a very real ache.

Yashiro, too, felt that strain. His was a quiet ache that reflected Doumeki's all the way back in Tokyo. But he was somewhat prepared for it, and diligently kept it from Misumi and Sugimoto as much as he could over the first few days.

Of all people to notice, it was the Kaichou.

'Pining for your mate?'

With a small start, Yashiro pulled his gaze from the window. He met the Doushinkai head honcho's smiling gaze.

'No, Kaichou-san,' Yashiro politely lied. 'Sorry.'

After years of dealing with superiors like Misumi and Hirata, proper deference was something Yashiro wasn't used to. Besides that, he was slightly unnerved at the old king pin's clairvoyance.

'No point keeping it from me,' the Kaichou said gently. His eyes crinkled in the corners as he watched Yashiro. 'I may not look like it at this age, but I know a thing or two.'

His voice sounded just as weathered and beaten as his face. Yashiro marvelled over the fact that he was still able to retain so much life in his small eyes and in the kindly creases of his smile. It was hard to imagine he had ruled over the underworld of Tokyo for so long and with such a strong hand.

The hospice had none of the cold, clinical stringency of a hospital. Here, there were soft colours and warm smells and hushed, gentle voices – an unassuming gateway to the next step. A place that calmly accepted the inevitable. It seemed to suit the Kaichou especially. Propped up on several pillows, the old mobster watched Yashiro with a shrewdness that Yashiro found he didn't altogether mind.

They had had to wait several days before the Kaichou was in any state to receive guests. And almost immediately after Yashiro had been introduced to him, Amou had pulled Misumi away on an urgent call from Tokyo. When the Kaichou looked like he had dropped off, Yashiro had moved to the armchair by the window. He heard the muffled sound of Misumi's voice in the hallway. He stared out at the Hokkaido postcard beyond, the rolling lawns and rows of coloured poppies all edged by tall conifers and pines. He thought of where Doumeki was, surrounded by the constant hum and stark greys of Tokyo. And the Kaichou had heard his thoughts.

'Let me tell you a secret,' the old man said, beckoning. 'It's one that not even Misumi knows.'

Intrigued, Yashiro moved to the armchair by the bed and the Kaichou inclined his head.

'I had an Omega mate once,' he said quietly.

Yashiro's mouth opened slightly in surprise. He didn't know what he had been expecting, but it certainly wasn't that.

'We were bonded,' the old man continued. 'A fated pair, I think it's called. But that kind of thing – it wasn't talked about back then. Times were different. We had to keep it a secret.' The Kaichou's eyes focused on something in the distance that Yashiro couldn't see. 'My wife found out eventually, which made things a little difficult. She was an Alpha, like me.' A genial, regretful sigh. 'Hard to sneak anything past an Alpha.'

Though Yashiro was still processing, the Kaichou's last remark made him scoff a little.

'Doumeki must be the exception then.'

The Kaichou laughed in surprise. It was rare for anyone other than Misumi to be brave enough to engage him in banter.

'Doumeki, is it?' He mulled it over. 'Strange name.'

'That's what I said,' Yashiro replied with a smile.

A comfortable pause ensued. Yashiro tried to absorb the Kaichou's startling little secret. He was still caught up in it when then Kaichou gently observed, 'You're thinking of leaving all this behind, aren't you?'

Yashiro looked up in slight shock.

He was on the point of asking the Kaichou what he meant, but clarification suddenly didn't seem necessary. A small unspoken understanding had passed between them.

'You should tell Misumi soon,' the Kaichou advised, his tone still gentle. 'You know why he's brought you here. It's been a few months since he last spoke to me about you, and it seems he's made his decision.'

Yashiro lowered his gaze, suddenly itching for a cigarette. Guilt wasn't a feeling he was comfortable with. He still remembered the cold snow beneath his naked body, the little flakes landing like icy needlepoints all over his skin. He still remembered the tune he whistled. And he remembered how Misumi had looked at him there. Without judgment. With barely any pity, though Yashiro knew he must be feeling it somewhere. Misumi, who had taken him under his wing and given him the only life he knew.

 _I didn't intend to become like this,_ he had said to Kageyama. Years had passed and he was already in deep. _It's just that it was the only path left._

'I thought about leaving myself. Several times, in fact,' the Kaichou continued, in a tone that sounded like a long sigh. 'But I never did. I'm not a man of many regrets but…'

He coughed a few times and adjusted himself weakly on the pillows.

'A soul bond is a powerful thing. It's not something a person can understand unless they've experienced it themselves. Things happen – things that seem too unlikely for coincidence. Sometimes even causality gets messed around. At first, you think you're drawn to them because they remind you of someone from your past. But over time, you realise everything in the past, everyone in the past, they were all pointing towards this one thing. This one… bond.'

Kageyama's face in profile as they sat together on the school rooftop. Silent strength.

Yashiro stared at the floor. He could still hear Misumi on the phone outside. He suddenly seemed a world away.

'It all sounds ridiculous, I know. Coming from an old mobster, no less.' Despite his words, the Kaichou met Yashiro's gaze evenly. 'But whatever you're feeling now, Wakashu, you should follow it. Don't repeat the mistakes of an old man.'

Two old men, the Kaichou corrected silently, thinking of the subordinate that Misumi had lost. But he kept that little secret to himself.

Yashiro stood up and walked to the window. He was silent for a long time.

And when he finally spoke, he did it with the gravity and hesitation of one who was finally putting words to long-held, long-suppressed thoughts for the very first time.

'It can't be... as easy as that.'

'I don't imagine it will be,' Kaichou said, countering Yashiro's far-away tone with his earthy, practical one. 'You've made a lot of enemies. That's an occupational hazard that'll follow you even if you try to leave.' After a pause something else occurred to him. 'I imagine it was the same struggle for… oh, I've forgotten his name again. The one with the scary face who used to run Matsubara.'

Yashiro smiled broadly and turned. 'Ryuuzaki.'

No one had heard from him, or his woman, for a whole month. It seemed he had given his old life the slip, after everything his woman had suffered at the hands of Hirata's men.

'He left for his woman's sake,' Yashiro said quietly, mostly to himself.

'Mm,' the Kaichou mysteriously intoned. He knew fragments of Yashiro's history with the former leader of Matsubara. 'Though... that may not have been his only reason.'

The Kaichou's suspicion on that count echoed Hirata's. _Don't you think Yashiro knows your infatuation with him?_ As the Kaichou watched, the sun eased out from behind clouds and gently lit up Yashiro's hair where he stood. In a way, the Kaichou mused, the most blessed Alphas are the ones who never know the desolation of desiring an Omega who was beyond their reach.

Yashiro, by then, had zoned out slightly. His mind was whirring as he stared out the window, as vibrant as the rows of flowers, as new as the colours that graced them. It was new and terrifying, just as new and terrifying as the day Doumeki had quietly come into his apartment and closed the door behind him. He remembered Doumeki's weight pressing on him as he lowered him to the bed, to do nothing more than stare at him. Outside, a pair of sparrows wheeled around in the air above the flowers, as dark and erratic as the flowers were bright and motionless. Yashiro's heart thudded and his body suddenly coursed with adrenaline that came from nowhere and had nowhere to go.

All he could do was turn to the Kaichou with a smile that was tentative and daring and made the old man's pulse spike dangerously, given the precariousness of his condition.

'Can I tell Misumi it was your fault?' Yashiro said.

The Kaichou's eyes twinkled.

'Blaming a dying man is a low blow.'

'Who's dying?' Yashiro returned swiftly, his smile widening. 'If anything, there's too much life in you, Kaichou-san.'

The old man let out a loud, surprised laugh at Yashiro's nerve.

'I can see why Misumi likes you so much,' he said, before adding, on impulse, 'He called you his third half, you know.'

Yashiro raised his eyebrows in confusion.

'His third what?'

Another mysterious chuckle. 'Never mind.'

* * *

There were many things to consider. Things that would take weeks to sort through, if not longer. Ties that needed to be broken, tracks to cover, old contacts forsaken, pledges broken, bridges burned. Perhaps new enemies made.

Yashiro's head was buzzing with all of it, and it was still buzzing from the vaguely surreal discussion he had had with the ailing and omniscient head of Doushinkai.

But what made his heart pound hardest was the idea of telling Doumeki. He almost flushed at the thought. Perhaps he could twist the whole thing into a joke about Doumeki's probationary period being over and that Yashiro felt he simply wasn't cut out for the Yakuza life after all. He would drag it on for a while before finally taking pity on Doumeki and explaining what he meant. What he was trying to say.

He wondered how many tries it would take for Doumeki to understand. He wondered if Doumeki's eyes would widen, or if he would flail for words as he always did. Or perhaps it wouldn't make much of an indent at all. Perhaps, for all of Yashiro's heart-pounding, path-rewriting upheaval, it would be met with a steady 'Okay, Boss' and nothing else. The thought made Yashiro's lips twitch.

Everyone had retired for the night. Yashiro stood before the bathroom mirror like he did back in his own apartment. The peacefulness of the hospice carried to the guesthouses, all minimum security, all with private courtyards and boardwalks. It was strange how eager Yashiro was to leave it all behind for the grey starkness of Tokyo. How eager he was to start… whatever life it was that lay ahead of the one he was in.

 _Whatever it is you're feeling now, Wakashu, you should follow it._

He stared in the bathroom mirror and thought of Doumeki passing behind him, barechested, mumbling an apology. Doumeki's arms looming on either side of him, Doumeki's outline beside him in the pale light of dawn. His warm, earthy scent and large hands. His scent in the morning, his scent in the middle of their heat.

 _I'm never leaving you, Boss._

It was all swimming so strongly in his veins, he was seeing and feeling Doumeki so strongly, that he was almost certain that Doumeki was just outside the door and not hundreds of miles away. He was so certain that it almost didn't come as a surprise when he heard the door to his room being opened. Or when heavy footsteps approached the bathroom.

Yashiro's heart leaped to his throat and he opened the bathroom door.

'Doume–'

The sound of a gun being cocked splintered the image he had already conjured cleanly in two; the image of a breathless, apologetic, possibly even flustered Doumeki apologising for having been unable to last even a week without him.

Yashiro instead found himself staring at two men he may or may not have seen before, one of whom had been at the airport in Tokyo a week ago. And Hirata stood behind them, calmly and quietly closing the door. The way he did it made Yashiro instantly think about the way Doumeki had quietly come into his apartment all those months ago. But when Doumeki had done it, it meant something much different.

When Hirata did it, Yashiro felt the door close to the future he had envisioned against a sunlit window that looked out onto rows of brightly coloured flowers and courting sparrows. A future he had been naive enough to hope for, for a handful of precious hours that day.


	3. The Godfather (Part II)

'It's almost disappointing,' Hirata remarked. 'You made it too easy, in the end.'

An off-grid hospice for the very rich. Barely any cell phone reception. Minimal security, Sugimoto snoozing in the next room. Open wilderness only a stone's throw away. And no Doumeki for miles.

Yashiro sighed.

'I really did.'

'You keep saying you want things done out in the open,' Hirata said, his hands in his pockets. His features were as blunt and unforgiving as always. 'I hope this lives up to your expectations.'

'Sneaking into a guesthouse in Hokkaido in the middle of the night isn't what I had in mind,' Yashiro said lightly, trying to steady his pulse. He knew where his gun was – on the bed next to his suit jacket – and that it was too far out of reach.

'At least I came in person. Now we can stop pretending like we're sworn brothers.'

'That was getting tiresome,' Yashiro agreed.

'Relying on others to kill you was a mistake.' It seemed Hirata was genuinely annoyed over that fact. 'You probably know about Ryuuzaki's parting gift. The bastard.'

Yashiro recalled something about a knife in Hirata's back. He noticed only then that Hirata's movements seemed stiffer than usual. He felt a surge of affection for Ryuuzaki, wherever he was.

'I won't hesitate to shoot you where you are,' Hirata said, adopting a more business-like tone. 'But I'd rather not cause a fuss here. So just come out to the car quietly and it'll be less painful for you in the long run.'

Sinking to the bottom of a river. Or dumped in a shallow earthy grave. Or left to rot at the bottom of a ravine in the Hokkaido wilderness. The possibilities flashed before Yashiro's eyes without any undue gravity.

In fact, he smiled. And a very quiet laugh escaped him.

Hirata was immediately irritated and suspicious. A little anxious, even. The Omega slut had always been unpredictable. He had to remind himself that he had complete control of the situation.

'What the hell is funny?'

'Your timing,' Yashiro replied, still smiling. 'If you had waited even a week, I would have been gone.'

Hirata frowned. 'Gone?'

'Vanished. Out. Free. Done a Ryuuzaki. You would have been rid of me without needing to get your hands dirty. But you chose to come out of the shadows now. Today, of all days.'

Hirata's frown deepened. 'If this is your way of trying to bargain –'

'It isn't,' Yashiro said, sounding tired.

After a few seconds, Hirata's shrewd mind considered the possibility that Yashiro was telling the truth.

'It doesn't matter,' he said, forcefully enough that it was clear he was frustrated and trying to stay focused. 'I've been wanting to do this for a long time.'

'Probably ever since our indirect kiss over the sake cup, right?' Yashiro said slyly, referring to the ceremony during which Hirata had been forced to take Yashiro on board as his second-in-command.

Disgust twisted Hirata's features.

'Start walking.'

For a tense few seconds, Yashiro returned his gaze without blinking. And then he took steady steps forward. As though he had nothing left to lose. One of the two goons stepped aside to let him pass.

 _I want to come with you._

Words murmured into his hair.

There were three of them against one of him. The barrels of two guns were trained on him. And he had only one functioning hand, on top of all that.

But he did it anyway. He lunged sideways towards the bed where his gun was.

He banked on the fact that they hadn't shot him when they first came in, which meant they were hoping not to draw attention to themselves with Misumi close by, not to mention the Kaichou himself and his inner circle.

Yashiro was right. No bullets came after him, but one of the men did. Yashiro had only just closed his left hand around the handle of his gun when he felt a heavy blow across his head, so sharp and hard he was sure, for a moment, that his skull had cracked.

He grunted and sank to the floor by the bed, blinking through the small lights exploding before his vision. Then he felt a kick in his kidneys, lethally aimed, which debilitated his whole body for a few seconds. Another kick, this time in his stomach, curled him up and he groaned quietly.

'Enough, idiot,' he heard Hirata snap. 'At this rate we'll have to carry him. Tie up his hands.'

Yashiro still groaned and blinked and writhed. But, to Hirata's disbelief and annoyance, he managed to squeeze out a chuckle.

'Didn't think... you were into that kind of thing.'

'Shut him up and get him to the car, quickly.'

Pain.

Pain in different places and in different colours. The worst was in the back of his head, where he could feel something seeping out slowly, hotly. And the pain in his lower back, singing in little aching notes. And the more rudimentary, unsophisticated pain in his stomach. He threatened to float above himself again, just like all those other times. All those other times when he was an Omega surrounded by Alphas.

At first, that particular thought was indistinguishable from the pain, and the pain was indistinguishable from the heat. He felt it as one of the men grabbed his arm, about to yank him upright. But then, more than the thought and more than the pain, the heat became prominent.

It spread from his chest to his head all the way to his extremities, all over his body. And it was so strong and so familiar that he uttered a small, plaintive moan. He didn't have time to understand why it was happening then, of all times. He only knew that it was. And that his body was crying out for only one person.

The Beta that had been about to pull him to his feet hesitated and let go. The one further back suddenly faltered too.

'What the f–? Shit, Boss, I think he's gone into heat!'

But Hirata, in that moment, was taken over by something else. He didn't need to be told that Yashiro had gone into heat. His body had known instantly.

The man near Yashiro leaned down again and grabbed the arm that was in its sling. He didn't expect Yashiro to suddenly lash out with his good arm, striking hard against his forearm, and following it up with a barefoot kick to his kneecap that made him stagger backwards.

'Don't touch me,' Yashiro hissed, his eyes livid and his voice shaking. His heart threatened to pound out of his chest and he felt his heat-induced sweat begin to soak his shirt.

Hirata laughed then, a loud, incredulous bark of a laugh, and pushed his men out of the way. He suddenly loomed over Yashiro, a wall of flesh, an Alpha, eyes glinting with single-minded purpose, staring down over an Omega weakened by his heat.

'So you _do_ know how to say no.'

He suddenly tugged Yashiro's injured arm out of its sling and twisted it behind his back. Yashiro's sharp cry of pain was smothered by the hand that clamped down over his mouth.

'Public toilet.' Hirata pushed him face-down on the ground. 'Lustful cat. How many Alphas have had you? Dozens? Hundreds?' His breath was hot in Yashiro's ear. 'But I'll be the first one to have the Omega whore while he's struggling, won't I?'

A tiny pair of bound hands on a weathered tatami mat.

 _Doumeki._

'Hold down his legs,' Hirata ordered over his shoulder, his voice strained, the sharp scent of his arousal suddenly everywhere.

It made Yashiro gag. He struggled and tried to cry out, tried to bite the hand that was covering his mouth or lash out again, but the combined force of Hirata's weight and his own heat made any real resistance impossible.

Hands holding down his ankles, a hand holding his arm painfully behind his back, hands groping his thighs, tugging at his pants.

 _Doumeki…_

He registered the sound of gunshots somewhere in the back of his mind. By then, he had receded from reality almost completely. He had slipped backwards into the memory of Doumeki's hands and face and scent. He was still there when a third gunshot sounded, much closer. And then a fourth.

And then a fifth.

Hirata's hand went limp. His entire weight suddenly collapsed onto Yashiro, flattening him completely. Winded, Yashiro gasped and spat in the open air when Hirata's hand fell away, still struggling for breath and still gagging in Hirata's scent. He tried to crane his neck around to see what had happened.

Hirata was then heaved away and his scent was replaced by a different one. One that filled Yashiro to his core and flooded him with dazed disbelief.

 _A soul bond is a powerful thing._

And suddenly Doumeki was there, lifting him off the floor, holding him up, touching the wound on the back of his head, eyes wide with concern.

'Boss?'

 _It's not something a person can understand unless they've experienced it themselves._

Yashiro stared, his gaze unfocused, and realised he was probably dreaming.

 _Things happen – things that seem too unlikely for coincidence._

'Doumeki...'

'Are you hurt anywhere else?'

It was his voice. His hands and his eyes. His scent everywhere. And Yashiro didn't care how it was possible. He didn't know why or how Nanahara was also suddenly in the room, along with Sugimoto. He only understood why he had gone into heat. And what his body was desperate for, what he was aching for.

He clung to Doumeki's shirt, seeing the same need in Doumeki's eyes. Doumeki's own shallow breaths and the sweat on his face.

'Fuck me,' Yashiro whispered.

Doumeki's rationality raced for the hills. Relief that Yashiro was in his arms, rage over what he had just seen, the searing, agonising pain in his shoulder – all of it was being supplanted by a single thing. The smell of his Omega in heat.

'Boss, you –' he tried. 'You're hurt _–_ '

But Yashiro pulled him into a hard kiss, desperate to melt into the warmth of his mouth. Doumeki leaned forwards instinctively, his hold around Yashiro tightening.

Yashiro pulled back, his forehead still pressed to Doumeki's, his eyebrows drawn in urgent need.

'Fuck me,' he urged again, hands grasping Doumeki's shirt, his face. 'I need you to fuck me, right now. Please.'

Doumeki growled and felt the last shreds of resistance dissolve. He swung Yashiro around and pushed him backwards on the bed. Yashiro's moan when he felt Doumeki on top of him, pressing between his legs, was one of desperation and utter relief.

And it made Nanahara and Sugimoto blush deeply.

Hirata lay dead at the foot of the bed, as did his two goons, and the third one by the door. Nanahara stared at the scene unfolding before him and was suddenly convinced he was still asleep on the plane.

'Dou–Doumeki, what the fuck?'

With an immense force of will, Doumeki lifted his head to look at Nanahara.

'Get out,' he said simply.

'Are you crazy?' Nanahara demanded. 'You can't do that _now_ , we have to get Boss to a –'

 _'Get out!'_ Doumeki bellowed suddenly, his voice deep and startling and his eyes lost in his heat.

It was the first time Nanahara had ever heard Doumeki raise his voice. For a split second, he was almost afraid of him.

It only lasted a moment before he reclaimed his disbelief and frustration. He exhaled angrily once he stepped out and closed the door. Lights were being switched on in the other rooms and people were rushing down to Yashiro's guesthouse from the main building. Nanahara wiped the sweat from his forehead and reached for a cigarette.

'Been in Hokkaido for twenty minutes and already I'm on door duty,' he muttered.

And then he sorely wished he hadn't forgotten the earplugs Doumeki had gotten him for Christmas.

 _'Ahhn! Yes! Doumeki...'_

Nanahara and Sugimoto exchanged an uncomfortable look before quickly averting their gazes.

Then something occurred to Sugimoto.

'Didn't… didn't Doumeki get shot?'

* * *

They were both almost fully clothed. Yashiro had only freed one of his legs completely from his pants, and they dangled off his other shin. Doumeki's cock had been freed only after a desperate fumble over his belt. And Doumeki kissed Yashiro as he sheathed himself in Yashiro's wet heat. Yashiro broke free of his lips and moaned.

'Ahhn! Yes! Doumeki...'

The physical distance and the time they had spent apart and everything that had happened over the past few minutes culminated in a blaze of heat and need that neither had experienced before. Yashiro felt as though his body was on fire, and that he melted in each place Doumeki touched him, each place his lips landed.

He gripped Douemki's shirt and held him in place, willing his whole body to open for him. He felt Doumeki's cock heating him up even further with each thrust. It was an aching, tremulous pleasure; a kind of ecstasy that he didn't think his own body was capable of feeling.

He barely registered it when the hand that had been gripping the back of Doumeki's shirt came away covered in blood. It was entirely peripheral to the need to have Doumeki inside, to have him come inside, and to have him quell his heat.

'Yes… Doumeki, don't stop… please don't stop…'

And tears mingled with his sweat, like it often did in his heats, but this time it was different. The tears came from somewhere else. He wrapped Doumeki in his body and felt him come with a shudder, and the feeling of it was enough to make Yashiro come too. He filled his lungs with Doumeki's scent and blocked out everything else.

But everything else began to trickle in slowly as they caught their breath. The voices outside the door. The slow realisation that they were lying in a room that also contained at least three dead bodies, one of which was Hirata's.

Doumeki lifted his head slightly and Yashiro met his gaze as he panted. And Yashiro remembered the blood.

'Why… are you bleeding?' Yashiro panted.

'I got shot.'

'Oh.'

A pause where Yashiro stared at the red smears on his hand with detached curiosity.

'Is it bad?'

'No. Just… my shoulder.'

But Doumeki suddenly sagged onto him, just like Hirata did. The pain was cresting again, enveloping him in larger waves. It had been submerged in his heat earlier. Now that he and Yashiro were both sated, it took over with a fury that startled Doumeki.

Yashiro blinked and tried to sit up.

'Hospital,' he said. 'Now. Come on, get up.'

Doumeki managed to push himself up and away. Still feeling a little dizzy in the aftermath of his heat and his climax, Yashiro pulled his pants back on and ignored the pain in the back of his head and in his right arm. Doumeki unsteadily got to his feet. He seemed pale and his face was etched in pain.

Yashiro inspected the rich-red bullet wound in the back of Doumeki's shoulder. He tried to batten down the sudden, overwhelming surge of anger over the sight of it. At the thought of how much pain Doumeki was in because of it.

'Stop fussing,' Yashiro chided, managing to keep his voice steady. 'It's just a flesh wound. What are you looking all dazed for?'

'Sorry…'

'Let's go.'

They made their way across the room, stepping over sprawled arms and legs, with Doumeki leaning too much of his weight on Boss, trying not to, trying to get his own thoughts together to make sure Boss was alright, Boss shouldn't be the one who was helping him.

He opened the door. A startled Nanahara turned around and took Doumeki's arm off Yashiro's shoulders and grunted in shock at how heavy Doumeki was, even when he was just leaning.

As Yashiro turned towards the parking lot, Misumi came around the corner with Amou in tow, looking shocked.

'What happened?'

'Everything's fine,' Yashiro replied calmly, before remembering. 'Well, Hirata's dead. But everything else is fine.'

'How did –?'

'We're going to the hospital,' Yashiro said. 'I'll explain later.' He turned to follow Nanahara and Sugimoto who were supporting Doumeki and heading off towards the parking lot.

And then he stopped and turned, as though he had forgotten something. Misumi, who was far from having caught up with what had happened, glanced up and saw a strange look in Yashiro's eyes. They carried an intentness that Misumi had rarely seen. It was as though Yashiro was trying to convey a part of himself without using words. A part that had always remained hidden.

But at length, his familiar half-smile returned and Misumi wondered if he had imagined the rest.

'I'll see you around, Oyaji,' Yashiro said before he turned to follow the others.

Misumi watched him walk away.

* * *

Early the next morning, Misumi waited by the Kaichou's door until his attendants told him the old man was awake. He wanted to be the first one to explain what had happened the previous night. When the attendant beckoned them in, Misumi nodded at Amou who followed him in.

He was relieved to see the same wry smile gracing the old man's wrinkled face.

'I heard there was a bit of a scuffle last night?'

Four dead bodies, a guesthouse owner to be paid off, policemen to be bribed and an entire branch of Doushinkai to be restructured.

'Nothing important,' Misumi heard himself say, his voice weighed down by a sudden weariness. A sudden resignation.

His words elicited an appreciative smile. Even without details, the Kaichou could easily imagine all that Misumi was about to deal with.

'Takes me back,' he said, almost nostalgically.

Misumi sat in the armchair by the bed and wondered where to begin. He noticed the view outside the window for the first time. The rows of flowers were rather startling.

'Where's Yashiro-san?' the Kaichou asked.

'At the hospital. His bodyguard was shot in the shoulder.'

'Ah. That must be Doumeki, the Alpha mate.'

Misumi was startled that the Kaichou knew. The old man's omniscience was occasionally unnerving. And it struck again after the silence that followed.

'I don't think Yashiro will be returning to Shinseikai,' the Kaichou said, suddenly but quietly.

In the ensuing, slightly stunned pause, Misumi could only stare.

The Kaichou looked at him thoughtfully for a few seconds. 'I gave you advice not to hold too many people close to your heart. But I gave him advice to get out while he still could. Maybe that was unfair of me.' A pause. 'Maybe it's because it's already too late for us.'

Yet another silence. Misumi noticed that he had taken out a cigarette without even realising it.

Amou hesitated before he went forwards and lit it for him. His ears rang slightly with the advice that the Kaichou had given Misumi. But, as always, he said nothing.

Misumi took a deep drag. He wasn't sure exactly what he felt. He wondered what the strange hollowness could be attributed to – whether it was because of Yashiro or someone else.

'We're just sentimental old men at the end of the day,' the Kaichou mused.

Misumi tried a small smile.

'A disgrace to our kind,' he agreed.

The Kaichou suddenly broke down into a coughing fit. Misumi glanced up and apologised at once. He was about to put out his cigarette when the Kaichou, teary-eayed and still recovering from the coughing, asked if he could have one.

Misumi stared for a moment before he chuckled and reached for his pack.

'I leave you alone with Yashiro for half an hour,' he said, lighting the Kaichou's cigarette for him. 'And suddenly he's lost to the wind.'

His tone was caught between weariness and amusement. And – he realised with a small shock – relief. He smiled and leaned further into it, trying it on for size.

'I'm like his fairy godmother,' the Kaichou said, chuckling his wheezy chuckle. Then after a pause, he added, 'Or Fairy Godfather.'

But Misumi looked nonplussed. The Kaichou's face fell, disappointed that he didn't have a witness to that sublime call. He sighed.

'Marlon Brando,' Amou quietly said from the corner.

Both pairs of eyes turned to him in surprise, causing Amou to blush a little.

The Kaichou laughed in delight. He turned back to Misumi, wondering if he had been too rash in his earlier advice. He inclined his head at Amou.

'Don't let that one go.'

* * *

The previous night, Nanhara had driven them to the hospital at breakneck speed. Sugimoto sat in the passenger seat and Yashiro was with Doumeki in the back.

Yashiro held his suit jacket over Doumeki's wound and pressed tightly. The half-smile Misumi had seen was still on his face, and he calmly alternated his gaze between Doumeki and the window, where the dark landscape hurtled past.

Doumeki lay on his side in Yashiro's lap, thinking only he would be happy to endure all the bullets in the world if it meant Boss would look at him like that.

By then, Nanahara had helped Yashiro piece together what had happened.

Hirata had posted a third goon outside the room door as a lookout. Doumeki had gotten there before Nanahara, knocked the lookout to the ground and barrelled into the room, but the guy on the floor reached for his gun and shot Doumeki after he entered.

'Didn't stop him, though,' Nanahara muttered in slight awe, remembering how he got there in time to see Doumeki bleeding profusely from his shoulder but holding his gun steady, swiftly taking out the other two already inside the room, and then Hirata himself.

Yashiro listened quietly. Some things made sense. Other things didn't, and probably never would.

'Back in Tokyo,' Nanahara continued, 'he was going on and on about how he thought you were in danger. And we couldn't get through to your phone. I figured it was some kind of Alpha Omega shit, so we got on a plane.'

He omitted the part where he had refused to believe Doumeki's paranoid ravings for a long time and only agreed to go with him when Doumeki threatened to go alone.

'The company won't cover the cost of the tickets, by the way,' Yashiro said absently. 'Since I didn't authorise them.'

 _'What?'_

'You could have just called the guesthouse reception.'

'Wha... _what?_ Like they would have been able to do anyth–!'

'I still don't get it,' Yashiro said, a little quieter, struggling to understand the timing. Even allowing for the highly unlikely possibility that Doumeki's instincts had been triggered all the way back in Tokyo... 'That would have been hours before Hirata was in my room.'

Doumeki opened his eyes and held Yashiro's gaze. He couldn't explain it either. He could still feel that dread, the pulsing fear that had taken over his head and chest, the pulsing need to be wherever Yashiro was.

 _Sometimes even causality gets messed around._

In fact, the only thing that did make sense was why Yashiro had gone into heat so suddenly. Physical proximity to Doumeki had been more than enough; the timing coincided with the moment that Doumeki and Nanahara's taxi arrived at the guesthouse.

'So on that count,' Yashiro realised dryly, 'it's not so much that you came in the nick of time, it's more that you're the _reason_ Hirata nearly assaulted me?'

'We also saved you from being sunk to the bottom of a lake,' Nanahara reminded him as he careened through a red light, still anxious at the thought that Yashiro hadn't been kidding and the two expensive last-minute plane tickets really would come out of his own pocket.

Sugimoto, meanwhile, was feeling unsettled and guilty over the fact that the Boss had almost been abducted and/or raped and killed while he slept soundly in the next room.

'It's weird though, isn't it?' he said to Nanahara. 'I mean, Doumeki was right in the end, wasn't he? Good thing he… he knew. Or whatever.'

'I told you. Alpha Omega shit,' Nanahara repeated in a low mutter, sounding both impressed and exasperated.

Yashiro smiled. He felt a strange warmth somewhere in the middle of his chest.

'Frankly, I'm a little hurt he didn't get on the next plane after mine.' He pinched Douemki's ear. 'So much for soul bond.'

'Sorry... Boss,' Doumeki managed, his voice tight.

'Shut up. No talking until you're healed.'

In the front of the car, Nanahara and Sugimoto were speaking of other matters. The state of Shinseikai, the rest of Hirata's inner circle who would probably remain loyal to him, how Misumi would deal with it all, and where it now left them.

Yashiro listened quietly once more. It was the same narrative he had heard for fifteen years.

Doumeki stirred slightly in his lap and Yashiro glanced down. He checked the state of Doumeki's shoulder. His eyes then travelled to Doumeki's missing finger. The knife scar on his left cheek.

Enough now, he thought.

He wondered again, with a smile, how Doumeki would react when he told him. The car sped on towards the hospital.

In the tumult and upheaval of that evening, and the week that preceded it, one thing both Yashiro and Doumeki had clean forgotten was that they were still within the three-month window.


	4. Oyaji and Touchan (Part I)

_**Author's note:** Thank you again for reading, everyone! From here on, I'm going 100% rogue with Omegaverse headcanon, with only throwbacks to canon. Hope you like anyway! Xx_

* * *

 _SEVEN YEARS LATER_

It was a world in which passions took hold without warning, paying little mind to reason. But it was also a world in which, sometimes, reason and passion combined. Where they went hand-in-hand, each overwriting the shortcomings of the other as neatly as yin and yang, healed the pain of the past, and created entirely new worlds, all in just seven years.

'Look, look! Touchan, look what I drew!'

Doumeki glanced down just as Aoi began tugging on his pants. She didn't relent even when she had his attention.

 _'Touchan,_ you're not looking!'

'I am,' he insisted gently.

He put the last dish on the rack, turned off the taps and dried his hands. He then took the drawing out of Aoi's hands. At first he couldn't focus on the lines and colours on the page because he was distracted, yet again, by Aoi's bright, expectant gaze. Her cheeks were slightly flushed and her eyes, so like Yashiro's, were now wide with anticipation. Her fair hair had fallen out of her ponytail in her rush to show her father her latest creation.

She was only seven, but it was already clear that she was going to be a beauty.

And as proud as Doumeki was of that fact, it also made him extremely nervous. He already had a vague idea of the anxiety that awaited him as the father of a teenage daughter who had stolen Yashiro's looks. During more paranoid moments, he wished he had retained a gun or two from his Yakuza days to scare away suitors. He thanked the gods that she hadn't been born an Omega, at least.

'Touchan!' Aoi complained, her face falling a bit. 'You're not looking at the drawing!'

'Sorry.'

He lifted the sheet of paper again. It was a carefully constructed drawing of her fathers, both with round, heavy heads and overlarge eyes. Doumeki was wearing an apron and frowning at a cake that appeared to be drooping out the sides of the tin. And Yashiro was sitting at the kitchen table, his hair bright yellow, laughing.

Doumeki felt a smile tug at the corners of his mouth.

Aoi beamed. Each time she drew that small, gentle smile from her father, she knew she had done well indeed. It felt like a better reward than any praise or even the gold stars her teachers gave her.

'It's very good,' Doumeki said sincerely. Aoi had also written _'Oyaji and Touchan'_ in large writing along the top.

'You're bad at baking,' Aoi said happily, in place of thanks.

Doumeki put it up on the fridge beneath a magnet, beside some of the other drawings she had done.

'You're just as good as your aunt,' he said, wondering again about that little coincidence, given that Aoi didn't have any blood relation with his sister. 'You could have your own room in a gallery too, one day.'

'You named me after her, huh, Touchan?' she said as she raised her arms, hoping to be picked up. He obliged.

'Mm,' he said. He stared at Aoi's multiple renderings of Yashiro. 'You're really good at drawing Oyaji. He's smiling just like he does in real life.'

'Yup,' Aoi agreed proudly.

Then she remembered something and she grew uncharacteristically sober.

'He's not smiling much today, though,' she said.

Doumeki looked at her in surprise. From what he had seen, Yashiro had done a good job of keeping it from the children. But Aoi's intuition was obviously keener than either of them had expected. And if she had picked up on it, then it was almost guaranteed that her younger brother, Sotaro, would have noticed too.

Earlier that day, Yashiro had waited to pick up Sotaro from preschool. Suit jacket draped over his shoulder, he leaned against the lamppost in the courtyard outside and reached for a cigarette. He was conscientiously avoiding the blushing gaze of the tall, sort-of-handsome divorcee who sat on a bench nearby, fidgeting. Yashiro smiled at the ground, pleased to find that even at forty-two, even after having two children, he clearly still had it. He knew that if he threw the guy a wink, it would probably make his day, if not his week. Just as he was wondering whether or not to do it, he overheard gossip from a group of mothers nearby.

'I couldn't believe it. The poor little thing.'

'That family has always been shifty if you ask me.'

'Eiji's own father. Can you imagine?'

Yashiro froze.

News reports confirmed it in the coming days, though names were omitted. It was discovered that one of the four-year-olds at the preschool, Eiji Takahashi, had been abused and molested by his father for years. The father was now in custody and the boy had moved away with his mother.

Little Eiji had been a friend of Sotaro's. They had had him over for playdates in the past.

Even though Yashiro couldn't be sure at the time he overhead the gossip whether or not it was true, the news clutched at his heart in a powerful and completely unexpected way.

Doumeki noticed Yashiro's mood later that afternoon itself, almost instantly, and asked what was wrong. Yashiro told him in an undertone, his face drawn. There was a shadow over his eyes that Doumeki hadn't seen in years and it made him recall darker days.

Although Yashiro managed a smile when Sotaro came into the living room and announced he had bathed and dried and dressed all by himself, Doumeki noticed that Yashiro was quiet for the rest that evening and retired early.

'Is he mad at me?' Aoi asked, fiddling nervously with the hem of her nightdress.

'No,' said Doumeki at once. 'Not at all.'

Aoi waited, eyes wide. Doumeki sometimes felt caught in them like he felt caught in Yashiro's. Her eyes would reduce him to putty in her hands.

And so he tried to explain, wondering how much he could tell a seven-year-old without upsetting her. A seven-year-old who was astute enough to know when she was being lied to or pacified.

'Your Oyaji,' he began slowly, 'wasn't always happy. There was a time when he was young, around your age, when bad things happened to him.'

Aoi struggled to imagine it. Her Oyaji was always laughing and joking.

'And so when he remembers it, like he did today, he feels sad again.'

 _And guilty,_ Doumeki silently added. _He feels as though he should have known, after everything he's been through. He feels as though he should have protected little Eiji._

'Is that why he went to sleep at the same time as Sotaro?' asked Aoi, who was always proud of the fact that she was allowed to stay up a whole hour past her little brother's bedtime.

'Yes.'

Aoi was silent for some time. Doumeki shifted her in his arms and walked towards the bedrooms, snapping off the kitchen light on the way.

'I know!' Aoi said at length. 'I'll make him cupcakes tomorrow to make him feel better. The vanilla ones that he likes.'

'That's a good idea.'

'But you're not allowed to help, Touchan,' she said, pulling at his earlobes and staring at her father with a fierce love in her eyes. 'You'd just mess everything up, as usual.'

Doumeki smiled faintly again. Aoi had inherited Yashiro's looks and biting sense of humour.

He glanced into the master bedroom before heading for Aoi's room. And he stopped.

Four-year-old Sotaro was sitting on the floor in his pyjamas, cross-legged, staring at Yashiro who was fast asleep in bed. He lifted his somber, serious gaze when Doumeki appeared.

'What are you doing?' Doumeki asked quietly.

'Oyaji's sad,' Sotaro replied in a loud whisper. His expression didn't budge an inch even as he spoke. His small, blunt spikes of hair were slightly dishevelled, as though he had been in bed for some time before getting up again.

Doumeki sighed internally. They were both far too observant. Sotaro especially, and especially where Yashiro was concerned. Doumeki held out his free hand and beckoned for Sotaro to come. Sotaro hesitated for long seconds, his gaze back on Yashiro, reluctant to leave his side.

'He's okay,' Doumeki assured him when Sotaro finally approached and took his hand.

For a guilty moment, Doumeki wanted to wake Yashiro, to show him how surrounded he was. How protected and loved. He cast a glance over his shoulder at the golden hair caught in lamplight.

* * *

 _SEVEN YEARS EARLIER_

Doumeki heard two pieces of news, only a few days apart, that changed his life forever.

The first was delivered on their flight out of Hokkaido. Doumeki's right shoulder was heavily padded and bandaged and he had spent two days in hospital before being discharged. Yashiro sat beside him on the flight, leaning his face into his hand and staring out the small oval window, and in an unaffected tone, he told Doumeki of the decision he had made when he had spoken with the Kaichou.

Doumeki's reaction was a combination of everything Yashiro foresaw. Blinking and false starts at speech and eventual silence.

'You going to say anything?' Yashiro prompted, smiling slightly, hearing his pulse in his ears.

Doumeki hesitated for a long time. He wondered if he was having a medication-induced hallucination.

'What – whatever Boss wants,' he said finally.

Yashiro stared at him for a moment before asking to borrow his shoulder, the one that didn't recently have a bullet in it, and he fell asleep for the rest of their flight back to Tokyo. Doumeki stared off into space, blushing very slightly, his own heart hammering. In amongst his medley of emotions, the one that was reigning at that moment was the sense that he had finally done right by Boss.

And it was only a few days after that that Yashiro noticed the symptoms. It came at a strange time; the three-month window of prime fertility was over and the need for physical closeness was ebbing. He found that he didn't feel the distance from Doumeki as urgently when he was out of the flat. It was a development that came as a mild relief, and allowed him to make all the necessary plans for their escape.

It was risky to remain in Tokyo any longer. He knew Misumi already knew. All his subordinates knew too. And Yashiro was fairly lucky in that Hirata's death overshadowed his leaving. They were all gearing up for a major reshuffle of Doushinkai that Yashiro knew he needed to evade completely if he was to emerge from that world, and bring Doumeki with him.

The first surge of nausea occurred when he was overseeing the furniture being moved out of the living room. He suddenly doubled over and raced for the bathroom. Doumeki was packing up his own flat and Yashiro, for the first time, was glad for the solitude.

After the movers left, he bought the test kit himself, and waited by himself. The bathroom was empty, as was the rest of the flat. A hush fell over Yashiro and suspended him in time for a moment. Another moment where he was truly alone, on the precipice of a life where he wouldn't be, ever again. Then he picked up the test and read the result.

Doumeki came back shortly afterwards and wondered why Yashiro was avoiding his gaze.

Yashiro, meanwhile, realised how ridiculous it was that he had been nervous about telling Doumeki about his decision to leave the Yakuza. This was a thousand times worse in every way.

When he finally told Doumeki, he didn't do it with any of the casual brazenness he had had on the plane. His words carried the kind of uncertainty that Doumeki alone had heard before, when he held Yashiro in the privacy of darkness, in the cocoon of their bond.

Quiet though they were, they left Doumeki winded. He recovered in a few seconds, enough to realise it must have happened back in Hokkaido, enough to loathe himself for putting Yashiro in that position yet again, and enough to feel a strange gratitude that he was at least there, this time, to see Yashiro through it when he –

'I'm keeping it,' Yashiro said, suddenly. He pretended to check the tape on one of the boxes that had been piled up and continued to avoid Doumeki's eye.

Doumeki was completely sure he misunderstood.

'What?'

'I'm keeping it,' Yashiro repeated, his tone a little stronger and even laced with a familiar impatience. He kept a hand on the stack of boxes and turned to look at Doumeki side-on. Doumeki's heart somersaulted when he saw the flush on Yashiro's face. 'So if you have any hang-ups about becoming a father at twenty-six, you should have thought of that before running to Hokkaido unannounced and making me go into heat and –'

Doumeki crossed the room and Yashiro was suddenly trapped in an embrace as sudden as it was stifling. Yashiro made a small noise of surprise before he felt his whole body cringe.

'Get _off,_ idiot –'

He struggled for a moment but Doumeki didn't let go. Then Yashiro realised.

'Are you… are you _crying?'_

He was. And he didn't stop for a long time. Yashiro was forced to stand there and watch him cry, suppressing the overwhelming urge to laugh. At himself, at Doumeki, at the fact that his life was in boxes waiting to be shipped quietly to Osaka.

'You done?' he said, when Doumeki finally looked like he was calming down.

Doumeki nodded.

'You'll have to man up before the kid gets here,' Yashiro warned.

'Yes, Boss,' Doumeki mumbled, sounding dazed.

Yashiro's lips twitched. 'You'll also have to stop calling me Boss. Or the kid'll figure out pretty quickly that his parents are ex-mobsters.'

Doumeki stared, looking lost again, and Yashiro laughed even though he also felt strangely close to tears.

He had just one phone call to make. He felt each ring stretch back several years, until he was lying against a chain-link fence on a school rooftop.

He didn't expect Kuga to pick up.

'The old man's in the shower,' he drawled. 'What do you want?'

'Can you pass on a message?'

'Yeah, whatever.'

'Do you have a pen?'

'I'm not your goddamn secretary. Just say it, I'll remember.'

'Okay.' Yashiro spoke slowly as though carefully counting off his fingers. 'Tell him I'm pregnant again, I'm keeping it this time and that I'm quitting the Yakuza. Oh and that I'm fucking off to Osaka for good, but tell him not to tell anyone else. Top-secret.'

A stunned pause.

'Should have gotten a pen, huh?' Yashiro said.

'What – you're _knocked up_ now? And what the hell do you mean you're pregnant _again?'_

'Oh, that's what I do now, haven't you heard? I'm having everyone's baby. I might have Kageyama's baby next.'

He regretted that Doumeki wasn't around to hear that call.

'I'd like to see you try,' Kuga snapped.

'I'd like to see _you_ try,' Yashiro replied smoothly, thoroughly enjoying himself. 'Oh wait, you're a Beta, so that's not something you can do.'

'Like _that's_ going to make me feel second-best to some loose Omega sl–'

 _'Give me that,'_ Kageyama's annoyed voice interjected in the distance. _'I told you to stop answering my phone.'_

When Kageyama came on, Yashiro repeated the news, in the exact same way, and heard the same stunned pause.

'So,' Yashiro continued airily, 'if you know a good OBGYN in Osaka, that would be useful. You know, someone who's not biased against Omegas.'

'I…' Kageyama began, sounding dazed. 'I know a few.'

'Thanks, Kage.'

That was a natural place to hang up, for both of them, but suddenly neither of them could. Yashiro felt a strange surge in his gut.

'Will you… be okay?' Kageyama finally asked, his voice more gruff and awkward than Yashiro had ever heard it before.

'I'll be fine.'

Twenty years, he thought. Kageyama thought the same thing. Yashiro's gaze was subdued for just a moment.

'Kage,' he said finally. 'There's... something I want to tell you.'

The tone of his voice made Kageyama's pulse pick up. Yashiro took a deep breath.

In a voice that was still quiet and serious, Yashiro told him, 'There's a spy cam in your bedroom that you never found. It's in the ceiling lamp.'

There was another long pause.

 _'What –?'_

Yashiro hung up.

It didn't feel real then and it wouldn't feel real for the next nine months, even when they were in Osaka. For Yashiro, the decision felt strangely like it had already been made. The first time he found out he was pregnant, he had been catapulted instantly into the darkness of his past. The second time couldn't have been any different. He had stared at the little plus sign and only thought of the life he was about to leave behind. He sensed that he was about to be catapulted into a future that was as bright as the past had been brutal. He also thought of what he had lost before, when he had purged his body over disgust and self-loathing.

 _Are you sorry because it was ours? Are you sorry because it could have been... anything?_

He remembered his words to Doumeki. They had been cruel before. Acerbic and vindictive. But suddenly, the same words came to him in a new light.

It was theirs. And it could be anything.

* * *

Osaka welcomed them quietly.

Their new flat was in a high-rise overlooking the river. The banks were bordered by cherry blossom trees that looked like a carpet of pale pink from their height. Doumeki was slightly overwhelmed by the size of their apartment; the little flat he had left behind in Tokyo could easily fit into their new living room.

But he didn't have time to be overwhelmed. Between midnight runs to cater to Yashiro's cravings (which ranged from pork buns to sea urchins) and keeping a paranoid eye out to constantly ensure Yashiro and the unborn child's safety, Doumeki was strung out until the baby arrived.

Yashiro watched him in wry amusement. The fact that Doumeki's protective instincts had been vamped up to such an extent – enough that the guy who accidentally knocked into Yashiro's shoulder on the sidewalk ended up being wrenched by the front of his shirt and thrown backwards into a wall for several tense seconds before Yashiro convinced Doumeki to let him go – all gave Yashiro a strange feeling of warmth that Doumeki didn't even intend.

The only time in those nine months that Doumeki felt at peace was when they were in bed at night and he would gather Yashiro in close and listen happily as Yashiro bemoaned the fact that his perfect body was slowly acquiring the proportions of a rubber duck and that it was all Doumeki's fault.

Each time Yashiro fell asleep in his hold, with Doumeki's large hands on him, he found he didn't slip into the nightmares that he thought a swollen belly and the terrifying, unreal thought of a life growing inside him would conjure. He was rarely visited by his stepfather, or by memories of gunshot wounds – both his own and Doumeki's. Occasionally he would think of the blood he wiped from his shoes, the men whose lives ended by his hands whether directly or indirectly. Families whose lives were forever changed. And he would temporarily panic, realising he didn't deserve whatever feeble, fleeting happiness it was that he had carved for himself. That the child wouldn't stand a chance with a monster like him for a father. That he was doing the child and the world a grave injustice.

But in moments like that, he would wake Doumeki, sometimes with a soft word, other times with a sharp nudge, and Doumeki would mutely gather him up and Yashiro would breathe in his scent and remind himself that he was fine, that they were going to be fine, and that he probably, hopefully, wasn't making a huge, horrifying mistake.

It wasn't real to either of them until the day Doumeki was asked to choose between them. There were complications during labour, as there often were with Omega pregnancies, and for a few minutes the doctor wasn't sure if he could save them both.

That was the first time Doumeki came to know his firstborn would be a girl.

'Him,' Doumeki said quietly, when the doctor pressed him again. 'Yashiro.'

The doctor nodded grimly and returned to the OR.

When both father and baby were given the all-clear, Doumeki numbly stepped into the room. Yashiro's sweat-drenched hair was plastered to his face. He opened his eyes weakly when Doumeki took his hand.

'She okay?'

Doumeki nodded. The decision he had made in the hallway outside was one that Yashiro would never come to know.

Yashiro saw how shaken he was was. He moved his head closer. 'Are my balls okay?'

Doumeki held back tears and nodded. He then heard a quiet mewling in the cot at the other side of the room.

He stared down at the impossibly tiny thing, no larger than two of his handspans. At first he didn't quite understand what he was looking at. But by the time he picked her up, he was completely overcome.

Yashiro often told Aoi that that was the moment someone superseded him in her Touchan's heart.

* * *

Aoi was a fussy, headstrong baby – an Alpha through and through – from the very beginning. The nurses struggled to feed her or placate her. After she was brought home, she brought several neighbours to the door with bleary-eyed complaints.

She finally began to settle after a few weeks when she recognised her fathers' faces. Especially Doumeki's. He was able to end her crying and put her to sleep far quicker than Yashiro. With one exception that they discovered when Aoi was a month old.

Her crying roused them again and a sorely sleep-deprived Doumeki sat up robotically. Without a word, Yashiro tugged him back into bed and got up himself. Doumeki watched him gratefully and fell asleep again as soon as his head touched the pillow.

In Aoi's room, Yashiro resigned himself to long painful minutes of unrestrained crying. He simply didn't have Doumeki's touch. Aoi's plaintive, unrelenting wail made him question himself again – question every decision that had led to that moment. He paced the room and tried rocking and cooing and nothing seemed to work.

He didn't know what made him start singing.* He had already started by the time he realised he was doing it.

 _'Hush now, baby, don't you cry._  
 _Rest your wings, my butterfly._  
 _Peace will come to you in time._ _  
And I will sing this lullaby.'_

Both the sound of his voice and the sound of Aoi's silence woke Doumeki again. He came to the door of the nursery and listened, utterly entranced.

 _'And oh,_  
 _Through darkness,_  
 _Don't you ever stop believing,_  
 _With love, alone,_  
 _With love you'll find your way,_ _  
My love.'_

Doumeki had heard Yashiro hum before, even back in their Yakuza days, and he had noticed it was always beautifully in tune, but he had never heard him like this. Yashiro's voice was mellow and rich while somehow quiet and soothing, rolling from one note to the other like a gently flowing stream.

 _'The world has turned the day to dark._  
 _I leave this night with heavy heart._  
 _When I return to dry your eyes,_  
 _I will sing this lullaby._ _  
Yes, I will sing this lullaby.'_

Back in their bedroom, Doumeki asked him where he had heard that song. Yashiro was quiet for a few moments. He told him it was something his real father sang to him often, before he died.

Doumeki didn't ask anything more.

* * *

Yashiro had learned from an early age that so much of the world, parts that were visible and the parts that weren't, was run by money. There was very little, in fact, that couldn't be controlled by it. His own induction into the Yakuza was based on it, on the false debt of his rent and the very real debt of Kageyama's practice.

And so he had planned for it, in some way, in the back of his mind. Perhaps not _this_ exactly, this daytime soap where he grabbed his Alpha bodyguard by the tie and raced off into the sunset. But something. Something that would call for the large stack of cash hidden in his safe and in various private vaults over the city. Some of it came from the cast-offs in various business transactions, things passed to him under the table in a way that Hirata and Misumi wouldn't notice. But most of it was done playing the stocks, which became almost second-nature over the years. A clean way to make money appear.

And in fact that was what he kept doing, even when they left Tokyo and set up in Osaka. It only took a discerning eye and a few taps on his phone and an extra zero or two would appear on the end of his account balance. It was a knack that he had always had, and one that he eventually turned into a career of sorts, though he always refused to acknowledge it as such. Even when he wore a suit and went to work in the little firm he started with his own capital, Yashiro still preferred to think of it as his 'little hobby'.

Doumeki, meanwhile, stayed at home with Aoi.

He would strap her to his front while he cleaned or prepared meals. They would walk along the river. When she was two, he would hold her hand and very reluctantly let go when she spied something she wanted to get a closer look at; a duck on the river or a dog being walked. They would rest beneath the cherry blossoms and Doumeki would pick out the petals that fell in her fair hair. She would grip his arm tightly and sometimes fall asleep and he would pray to the gods to preserve her as she was for as long as possible, before she grew up too quickly.

Aoi's first word was _Touchan_ and her earliest memory was of watching him do push-ups in the living room. She made a game of rolling beneath him swiftly, from one side to to the other, between each push. When she grew too big to do that, she would perch on his back and tug at his hair, and he would continue his routine with a smile.

There was once a day when Aoi played with a few friends her age who lived on the same floor. The other two children also lived with stay-at-home fathers. Doumeki tried to make small talk with the other fathers where he could but he was mostly relieved when it was time for them to head home to their wives.

Though Doumeki didn't know it, Aoi, who was three at the time, had spent a few minutes ignoring her playmates and staring almost philosophically at Doumeki where he was standing with the other men. She realised something in that moment. When her friends left, she came to Doumeki and informed him, with a serious face, that he was definitely better than all the other fathers in the whole, big world.

* * *

In a strange way, Yashiro occasionally missed the unique artistry of his life in the Yakuza. The sense of being one of the masters of that invisible, ever-present underworld. Occasionally the past came to him not in bursts of blood and pain but in terms of the small kingdom in which he had been feared even more than ridiculed. He had proved himself capable despite being an Omega and he had been silently proud of that fact.

These feelings were often supplanted by a sense of unworthiness, which Doumeki also sometimes felt. That they were fooling themselves into thinking they could outrun a past as dark as theirs. Soldiers who had resigned themselves to war.

But Aoi put those thoughts to rest as soon as they reared. Passion and reason had combined, and it had created her. For her, and for Doumeki, Yashiro learned to completely discard his old life, the only thing he knew, the only thing he thought he was good at, for a life that suddenly involved laughter and late night feedings and a view of the carpet of cherry blossoms by the river.

* * *

Because of how much both had suffered at the hands of their fathers, a silent, implicit agreement was made that neither would ever raise a hand to Aoi. She was raised with that unique, doting, careful love that came from parents who made up for the demons of their own pasts and the mistakes of their parents by ensuring she was safe and happy at all times.

Yashiro only lost control once, and only for a split second.

Aoi was just as brilliant and precocious as Yashiro had envisioned long ago. She was toddling at eight months and speaking in high, constant and perfectly understandable streams of consciousness by the time she was two. Each time Yashiro passed Doumeki in the kitchen and pulled him into a kiss, Aoi would instantly demand the same from her Touchan.

Her personality was so similar to Yashiro's that they often clashed, especially when Doumeki wasn't there to silently broker an agreement between them, simply through his presence.

'It's like raising Kuga in female form,' Yashiro once lamented.

She locked horns with her Oyaji again on the morning she refused to take her medicine. Her fever was improving but Yashiro took no chances. He crouched and tried coaxing the little medicine cap of purple liquid into her mouth.

'Come on, don't you want to be all better?'

 _'No!_ I don't _want_ it!

Doumeki was still in the bedroom getting dressed and Yashiro was frustrated in the thought that Aoi would have taken the medicine in a heartbeat if Doumeki was the one trying.

After several failed attempts where they were both reaching the end of their tethers, Aoi slapped the medicine out of Yashiro's hand. It was his right hand which still carried memories of its days as a useless add-on. The medicine spilled richly on the pale rug and Yashiro's hand stung. Before he knew it, he pulled her forwards by the wrist and slapped her hard across the shoulder.

Her eyes grew wide in the sudden silence. Then her lip trembled. Yashiro's regret was instantaneous. A small black drop of tar in his stomach.

'Aoi –'

She pulled out of his grasp and ran for the bedrooms, crying for her Touchan.

'What's wrong?' Yashiro heard Doumeki ask in surprise.

'Oyaji hit me!' Aoi said, her voice high and shaking.

He came into the bedroom to see her hiding behind Doumeki's legs. Startled, Doumeki looked up at Yashiro. But Yashiro looked only at Aoi. At the way she clutched Doumeki's pant legs. The little black drop of tar spread inside him.

'Aoi,' he tried again. He came close and knelt. 'Oyaji should never have done that. I'm sorry. I'll never do that again. No one should ever do that to you.'

Aoi's eyes were huge and tearful.

'Okay?' Yashiro said, trying to mask his self-loathing in a light voice, which nevertheless shook very slightly.

 _Ojisan, stop! Please..._

 _Why should I stop? You like it when it hurts._

Doumeki heard the tremor in Yahiro's voice. He watched them both, still unsure what to do.

Aoi took another few seconds to decide. Then she came out from behind Doumeki's legs and put her arms around Yashiro's neck. She cried into his shoulder, lost in relief and self-pity. Yashiro closed his eyes and picked her up as she continued to sob. When he opened his eyes he met Doumeki's gaze. The tentative relief he felt in Aoi's forgiveness was multiplied, and found proper closure, in Doumeki's gentle expression.

When Aoi had recovered somewhat, she stayed in Yashiro's arms, cleverly milking every drop of her father's obvious repentance. She sniffled importantly.

'Oyaji did something bad,' she declared. 'So I get to punish Oyaji now.'

Yashiro chuckled, thinking there was a Yakuza leader in her somewhere.

'Sure.'

By the following morning, when Aoi and Doumeki enjoyed waffles and Yashiro was condemned to toast, all had been forgiven.

* * *

Yashiro's heats came regularly, and his suppressants worked reliably. He sometimes fondly recalled their unrestrained days in the first three months after being bonded.

Despite the fact that the frequency had been significantly curbed since Aoi, the intensity hadn't ebbed at all. They were both grateful that Aoi had proven to be a deep sleeper, though her curiosity still proved troublesome. They had to find a new place to hide their massive stack of condoms when they found her on the floor, surrounded by dozens of the little plastic packets, some of them open. She glanced up and asked why her parents kept so many balloons in their bedside drawers.

'That's what I get for trying to hand a box of condoms to the first Aoi,' Yashiro realised, wondering if he ought to start believing in karma.

Sometime when Aoi was three, Yashiro looked up from his laptop on the couch and found himself staring at them sitting on the rug in front of the television. Doumeki was watching intently as Aoi drew a picture, changing crayon colours often and keeping up a running commentary of her artistic choices. Doumeki then stretched his arms behind him, his shoulder muscles straining against his t-shirt.

It was both a sudden heat and one that crept up on him slowly. Doumeki glanced up at once. Yashiro, breathing a little raggedly, moved his laptop away.

'Aoi, stay here,' Doumeki said, his voice and eyes changing.

Aoi was wrapped up in her drawing and barely heard him, and barely noticed when her parents disappeared for twenty minutes.

In the bedroom, clothes were whipped off, and Doumeki pinned Yashiro to the bed, their cocks leaking, Yashiro's hole already drenched. He arched his neck and pulled Doumeki closer as he licked his way down Yashiro's stomach.

A strange feeling was taking over Yashiro. A feeling that was new, yet again, just when he thought he had exhausted his body's ability to experience new things. And he realised what it was when Doumeki reached for a condom under the mattress and ripped it open with his teeth.

Yashiro sat up and took it out of Doumeki's hands, his heart pounding louder than he could remember.

 _Make me pregnant._

The words were there, on the tip of his tongue, but he couldn't say them.

Doumeki heard them.

The plastic edge of the condom was still in Doumeki's mouth, exacerbating the dumbstruck look on his face. It almost made Yashiro laugh. Doumeki spat it away before kissing Yashiro's mouth hard and fast and flattening him once more.

It was new for Doumeki too, and utterly exhilarating; the feeling of fucking his Omega mate raw, thoroughly and deeply, making him moan and cry out and cling, and knowing he wanted Doumeki's to come inside him, to bear his seed and his children. To love and want him, Doumeki, that much.

'Yes!' Yashiro gasped. 'Oh, fuck… So good. Yes, come inside. Ugh, come inside! I want to feel you come. Mmh, breed me, Doumeki!'*

Doumeki groaned and reached down to enclose Yashiro's cock in his hand, thrusting as though fuelled entirely by Yashiro's heat and Yashiro's words. His body grew hotter and hotter, both slick with sweat and Yashiro's scent sending him somewhere else.

'I'm going to come,' Yashiro realised, feeling Doumeki plunging deeper, getting as far as he possibly could. 'Oh, fuck… I'm coming…'

It was a burst of heat within him, superimposed over the heat everywhere else. Yashiro felt it in tandem; Doumeki release inside him, and his own body pulling it all in as he came.

Doumeki collapsed on his side beside him, huffing, keeping his eyes on Yashiro's face. He ran a hand through Yashiro's hair, pressed his nose to his cheek, brushed his thumb across his lips. And Yashiro inclined his head slightly and let him.

Then Doumeki's hand travelled to his stomach. 'Do you think…?' he asked tentatively. Surreally.

Yashiro opened his eyes halfway.

'Yes,' he said.

Doumeki was struck by how certain he sounded.

* * *

And just like that, in a way that was gentle and unassuming, Sotaro was conceived. He came entirely from Yashiro's will, at a time when Yashiro wanted him, when he felt the need for him somewhere in his body. And Sotaro was born in much the same way, after only a few hours of labour and without any fuss.

And this time, Yashiro held Sotaro before Doumeki did. By then, the doctor had run a quick test and confirmed that Sotaro was an Alpha too.

'I'm an Alpha factory,' Yashiro told Doumeki weakly.

Doumeki had come into the room to see Yashiro holding Sotaro and wearing an expression that Doumeki was sure he hadn't seen before. He then stared at his son, whose few strands of hair were as dark as Aoi's were fair.

* * *

Yashiro's love for Sotaro newly defined him. And Sotaro's love for his beautiful Omega father was earnest and reverent. Doumeki would often catch them lying together, their heads close, two-year-old Sotaro feeling out Yashiro's face with tiny hands and a solemn expression.

Doumeki sometimes envied the love Sotaro had for Yashiro. It was a purer love than Doumeki's. It was one that sought only to cherish and, when Sotaro grew older, to protect. In many ways it was the love that Doumeki felt he ought to feel for Yashiro, with none of the need to ravish. The thought made him happy and grateful, all the more so when he wondered whether perhaps even his own soul bond with Yashiro was all for this – so Yashiro could have someone like Sotaro in his life. Someone to love him completely and innocently. A love which, until his son was born, Yashiro had lacked his whole life.

If the favourite part of Aoi's day was spent with her Touchan, the favourite part of Sotaro's day was when his Oyaji came home from work. He would race to the door when it opened and Doumeki would hear Yashiro laugh and swing him up in the air and give him a noisy kiss on the cheek. Yashiro would come into the living room with Sotaro perched on his hip, Sotaro's cheeks flushed over the faintest of smiles.

* * *

Aoi, meanwhile, dealt with having to share the spotlight with a lot more grace than her parents expected. She took the quiet, gentle Sotaro on board as her underling, and trained him in all the ways of Aoi. She also used him as a convenient scapegoat for certain things, like juice spilling or toothbrushes stuck in USB ports, and only Yashiro's astuteness was able to pick out the real culprit. Beyond that, however, she loved and protected her younger brother rather fiercely.

And so did Yashiro. When Sotaro was seven, Yashiro dropped him off at school on his way to work and saw three older boys jostle him in front of the school gates. One of them pushed him straight to the ground. Yashiro felt a surge of anger and nearly got out of the car. But when Sotaro quietly got up, brushed himself off and kept going, he thought the better of it. There was no use stepping in and humiliating Sotaro further.

Then he spied the bicycles that the bullies had ridden to school and parked on the bike rack.

That afternoon, Sotaro was surprised to see his father waiting to pick him up. Yashiro's work usually kept him at the office later than that. And he wondered why he was standing by the bike rack.

'Oyaji? What are you doing here?'

'I gave myself some time off,' Yashiro said mysteriously. 'No point being the boss if I don't do that every now and then...'

He glanced over Sotaro's shoulder. The three older kids who had pushed him to the ground that morning approached the bike rack. They saw Sotaro standing with a well-dressed man with slicked-back blonde hair.

'Hey, boys,' Yashiro said warmly. 'Sorry to say, but it looks like someone's slashed the tyres of your bikes.'

They all looked at their bikes and saw he was right. Their bikes slumped uselessly in their racks. Then they glanced up and saw Yashiro casually flick a penknife closed before pocketing it. The blade had glinted brightly in the sun.

'Best be careful, don't you think?' Yashiro continued. His expression was suddenly razor-sharp. 'There are psychos around here.'

The kids paled. Sotaro flushed and stared at his father in disbelief.

'Do you need a lift home?' Yashiro asked the older boys, tilting his head innocently.

'N-no, sir,' they stammered. Yashiro watched as they unlocked their bikes and walked them hurriedly down the street.

On the ride home, Sotaro stared at his father with newfound awe.

'What?' Yashiro said, noticing his stare out of the corner of his eye.

'Nothing,' Sotaro said averting his gaze. He kept his eyes on his lap.

Yashiro smiled and reached over to ruffle his hair.

* * *

Not long after Aoi discovered where babies came from, and the precise roles of Alphas and Omegas in that regard, she demanded the details of her conception. Her fathers flailed a little.

'It happened in a guesthouse… in Hokkaido,' Yashiro said gingerly.

 _In a room covered with dead bodies. While your Touchan had a bullet in his shoulder._

Aoi seemed happy with that explanation. Yashiro and Doumeki breathed a sigh of relief. It was an improvement on the day a few years before when Aoi had walked in on them and their explanation meandered down a strange road. _Sometimes, when two daddies love each other, one daddy ties the other daddy's hands with a leather belt…_

Sotaro, however, proved to be much more problematic on that count. In fact, the topic of Alphas and Omegas was the first and only real barrier that formed between himself and Yashiro.

He was nine at the time, and he came home from school looking troubled. Doumeki tried asking what was wrong, but Sotaro struggled to put words to his thoughts. When Yashiro came home a few hours later, he heard about Sotaro's strange mood and came to his room. For Yashiro, Sotaro made more of an effort to explain.

'We were taught about Alphas and Betas and… and Omegas in school today,' he said.

'Ah,' said Yashiro. He sat slowly on Sotaro's bed and waited for Sotaro to say more.

'You… you're an Omega, right Oyaji?'

'I am,' Yashiro said carefully.

Sotaro frowned, remembering all the things his teacher had said happened to Omegas. The heats and the sex. The bite that bound them to an Alpha. It had upset him deeply. It spoke of a hidden world that was jarring and ugly and unreal. And he couldn't come to terms with the fact that his own parents might inhabit it. Not his beautiful, perfect Oyaji. Oyaji wouldn't be reduced to whatever it was that happened to Omegas in heat.

'But that means you…' Sotaro flushed, unable to finish that thought. He tried a different one. 'But Touchan would never do… all that stuff to you. And you wouldn't… let him. Right?'

His tone was imploring. Yashiro felt heat rise to his face and his stomach somersaulted. He wondered how on Earth to reply. And why he suddenly felt so overwhelmingly guilty.

'Sotaro, it's not… it's not how you think it is. Your Touchan and I –'

But Sotaro had understood enough in his Oyaji's answer. He suddenly couldn't look at him in the same way.

And he closed himself to Yashiro from then on.

Yashiro felt that distance from Sotaro in quiet despair. His son rarely looked him in the eye, rarely spoke to him, and insisted that he catch the bus to school instead of getting lifts from Yashiro on his way to work. Yashiro seemed to accept it all in resignation.

Doumeki watched them, his heart heavy. A strained month followed where Yashiro subtly moved out of his reach in bed and grew a familiar barrier around himself that was thin but impenetrable. Doumeki felt it, and knew why it was there. Even Aoi, who, at twelve, was busy at the head of her clique of girlfriends, noticed the strange new tension at home.

Sotaro's rejection, and what Yashiro assumed to be his disgust, made Yashiro recover a fragment of his past. He was reminded of all the ways in which he was weak. He was reminded of all his defects, all his perversions, all reflected in the fact that he had lost the love of someone who had looked up to him so earnestly.

'Imagine if he knew everything else,' Yashiro said quietly to Doumeki, with a cold laugh. Public toilet. Lustful cat. The dozens and dozens of Alphas who had had him over the years.

Doumeki wanted to say something, or reassure him in some way, but he knew it wasn't in his power to do so. And so one day, he knocked gently on Sotaro's door while Yashiro was still at work.

He understood what Sotaro was going through. For Sotaro, just like it was for Doumeki, Yashiro was simply the most beautiful person in the world, in every way. And Sotaro needed some time to reconcile his innocent love for his father with the reality of the world.

'Oyaji won't say it,' Doumeki said gently. 'But he's very upset that you're not talking to him.'

Sotaro flushed deeply with shame and confusion. He almost felt like crying.

'He's still the same Oyaji,' Doumeki went on. 'Whether he's an Omega or not. He loves you very much.'

Sotaro continued to remain silent. There was a long silence between them, both silent and grave and both caught in the complexity of their feelings. Doumeki almost smiled. He saw, in that moment, how much his son took after him.

The following morning, Yashiro was in the kitchen grabbing some files when he noticed the little lunch Doumeki had packed for Sotaro still sitting on the counter.

'Sotaro!' he called, just as Sotaro reached the front door. 'You forgot your bento.'

Sotaro came into the kitchen and silently took the bag from Yashiro, his gaze on the floor. On his way back out, he stopped suddenly. Then he turned, came to Yashiro and hugged him. He found, as he did so, that he was again on the verge of tears.

Yashiro's heart leaped up into his throat. He hesitated for a moment before he hugged him back, almost buckling under the weight of his relief. Sotaro's hair tickled his chin. Sotaro drew back and their eyes met properly for the first time in weeks. Yashiro ran a hand through his hair.

'You're getting tall,' he said.

Sotaro blushed slightly and said nothing. Yashiro stared after him.

When Doumeki came into the kitchen, he didn't understand why Yashiro suddenly grabbed the front of his shirt and pulled him forwards, lips locking, pressing them against the counter, but he didn't stop to complain. It had been over a month, after all. He lifted Yashiro swiftly onto the counter and pressed their chests together firmly, his hard-on already straining against his pants. Yashiro breathed heavily in his ear.

Doumeki had removed Yashiro's vest and was halfway through unbuttoning his shirt, lightly nipping at the skin around his nipples, and Yashiro's hand was deep in Doumeki's hair and his head tilted back, legs wrapped firmly around Doumeki's hips, when Sotaro came back into the kitchen.

'Oh.'

Both Yashiro and Doumeki glanced round in shock.

'I forgot my –' Sotaro stammered, but he forgot what he had forgotten and his face turned beet red. 'S-sorry!'

He bolted before Doumeki and Yashiro even had a chance to spring apart.

A few minutes later, at the busstop, Aoi noticed that her brother looked like he had seen a dead body.

'What's with you?'

When Sotaro refused to say, Aoi glanced back at their apartment and took a clever guess.

'Did you catch them doing it or something?'

Sotaro blushed yet again. Aoi sighed in sympathy.

'I wish they'd stop doing that,' she said dryly. 'I've walked in on them like a hundred times. It's so gross.'

Sotaro looked at her with gratitude and a powerful new kinship, as though they were veterans of a very specific war.

Meanwhile, back in the kitchen, Yashiro laughed in bemusement, still seeing Sotaro's shocked face in his mind. Doumeki's head swam with the sound of his laugh. As Yashiro pulled him forwards again and deftly wrapped his legs around his hips once more, Doumeki marvelled over the fact that Yashiro's laugh had the same effect on him then that it did twelve long years ago.

* * *

 _ ***Author's note:** I'm sure you guys probably already figured, but 'Oyaji' and 'Touchan' are nicknames Japanese kids have for their fathers. I love the idea that Yashiro became an Oyaji himself, like what he used to call Misumi in a Yakuza context. And 'Touchan' seemed to suit Doumeki somehow._

 _Also, the song I imagined Yashiro singing is 'Lullaby' by Josh Groban (though Yashiro's voice would be far gentler than Josh's). My headcanon is Yashiro's real father singing it to him, promising to keep him safe, not knowing that he was going to die and leave his son in the hands of monsters :( Actually, beyond that, the mere idea of Yashiro singing makes me want to cry for some reason. I even had him singing in my old story Careful Now. And I hear there's a reference to Yashiro singing in the next chapter in canon! Omg, Sensei is glorious._

 _And the asterisk in the middle of the sex scene is so I can give a quick credit and shout-out to daniinad for the breeding kink idea! Thank you my dear! :)_


	5. Oyaji and Touchan (Part II)

Over the years, they had grown accustomed to calling one another Oyaji and Touchan. But Yashiro, on rare occasions, called him Chikara. And Doumeki, on even rarer occasions, slipped up and called him Boss.

Whenever Aoi overheard this particular slip up, she would laugh and tease her Touchan about it endlessly.

'Hey, _Boss,'_ she would say to Yashiro. 'Can you sign my excursion form please, _Boss?'_

They would both laugh as Doumeki blushed.

She overheard it again when she was fourteen. Yashiro and Doumeki were both in the kitchen at the time and Yashiro was dryly complaining about the fact that he had lost a lot of his muscle tone in recent years. He noticed he had progressively moved two belt holes further down when he dressed in the morning. He was just broaching fifty and his blonde hair was streaked with grey at the temples.

Doumeki, meanwhile, was barely into his forties and was just large and physically impressive as ever. Yashiro airily told him he was free to find some hot young thing to screw as Yashiro slowly disintegrated into old age.

Though Doumeki knew he was joking, he turned to him resolutely.

'Boss is still the most beautiful person I've ever seen.'

Yashiro gave him a wry look that disguised the fact that his heart had skipped a beat.

Aoi came into the kitchen then. Even at fourteen, she walked with a certain unconscious sashay that turned heads. She slid backwards onto the kitchen table and crossed her legs, munching on an apple.

'Yeah, you're still beautiful, Boss,' she teased in a sing-song voice. There was a bewitching, almost sultry quality in her half-lidded eyes. Her hair, long and golden, caught the light in mesmerising glints.

'Your Touchan needs to get his eyesight checked,' Yashiro said over his shoulder with a smile.

'Who's more beautiful, Touchan?' Aoi asked, eyes twinkling. 'Me or Boss?'

Yashiro grinned, wondering how Doumeki would field that one.

The question made Doumeki recall a day from a few weeks ago, when Yashiro and Aoi had gone shopping and waited for Doumeki to pick them up outside the mall. Yashiro had been standing with his hands in his pockets, wearing an impeccable new three-piece suit. Aoi's hair had been styled so it fell in waves and she wore a light white dress that fluttered near the tops of her knees. Both wore sunglasses. Both turned, smiling, when Doumeki drew up. Both seemed unaware of the looks they were attracting from everyone who passed.

'I think you're the most beautiful girl in the world,' Doumeki said sincerely.

Aoi pouted. 'That's cheating!'

But there was a rare flush in her cheeks.

* * *

Even as Aoi reached her teen years, her love for Doumeki never once dimmed. She still doted on him, and he on her, to an extent that made Doumeki thank the gods he had once prayed to on a cherry-blossom covered riverbank when Aoi was only two years old.

But when Aoi turned fifteen, Yashiro noticed she was rather despondent about something. He even noticed that she was carefully hiding it from Doumeki with enough skill that even his finely honed senses didn't pick up on it. She still smiled and laughed whenever he was around and only Yashiro noticed her deflate slightly when Doumeki wasn't paying attention.

He asked her about it when it was just the two of them alone in the house.

Aoi regarded her father for a moment. She drew a couch cushion towards herself and held it against her chest.

'How come boys don't want to date me?' she said quietly.

Yashiro lifted his eyebrows. It was strange to hear such a meek insecurity from his daughter, who always seemed larger than life and above such things.

'What makes you think they don't want to date you?'

'All my friends have been asked out at least once. All the Betas. Even the Omega girls. But not me.'

Yashiro understood at once. He realised how hard it would be for a strong Alpha woman to make her way in a world of petty, small-minded men. He smiled.

'Boys are strange,' he said. 'They don't like being with someone who's better than them. They'll go out with Beta girls and Omega girls so they can feel better about themselves.'

Aoi absorbed his words quietly.

'So who needs _those_ guys?' Yashiro said dismissively. 'You just need to find someone who will love you for being strong and intelligent, instead of resenting you for it.'

'Like Touchan found you,' Aoi said.

Yashiro smiled flickered slightly and he dropped his gaze.

 _The boss is kind-hearted, strong and beautiful._

'Yeah,' he said finally.

'You think someone like Touchan will find me?'

'Absolutely.'

Aoi seemed somewhat placated by his confidence. She smiled gratefully.

'You're so lucky, Oyaji,' she said, her tone both warm and envious.

Yashiro returned her smile.

'I know,' he said quietly.

* * *

A year later, thirteen-year old Sotaro approached Doumeki with a request that he had mulled and stressed over in silence for many sleepless nights.

'Touchan,' he said, and then hesitated almost immediately.

Doumeki turned and was surprised to see his son consumed in a blush. He was hunching his shoulders in a posture that emphasised his height and lankiness.

'What is it?'

'Uh…' Sotaro began. 'Can you… when you and Oyaji… at night…'

As Doumeki's confusion mounted, Sotaro took a deep breath and tried again.

'Can you two not be… so loud?'

It took Doumeki a few more seconds. Then he blushed almost as deeply as his son.

'Uh…'

On both sides, awkwardness met awkwardness. But despite how much Sotaro wished he could disappear into the ground, he was glad he had finally worked up the nerve to say it.

He gathered that Yashiro was going through his heat, and that meant around three days of having to overhear moans that he knew, to their credit, his parents believed weren't overly loud. But he had an exam the next day and couldn't handle another night of lying awake in bed, curled up and mortified and very slightly aroused. He was a healthy thirteen-year-old Alpha, after all.

And he was relieved he felt able to talk to Doumeki about it. He would rather have died before he brought it up with Yashiro.

Doumeki, still speechless, found himself thinking about the earplugs he had once bought Nanahara for Christmas.

Sotaro tentatively continued, 'So maybe you could just tell Oyaji to… keep it down…'

Unfortunately for him, Aoi had been passing the bedroom at that moment and heard what Sotaro said.

The fact that she was a heavy sleeper meant she didn't understand her brother's plight. And she instantly made it worse.

'You _listen_ to them?'

Sotaro spun around, his heart falling. 'What? No!'

'Ew, you totally do! What is _wrong_ with you?'

'I don't!'

'Oyaaaaaaaji!'

She danced down the hall and Sotaro darted after her. But she beat him to the door to the study where Yashiro was just finishing a conference call and looked round.

'Sotaro listens to you and Touchan having sex!' Aoi announced, just before Sotaro tackled her out of the doorway, ears flaming.

'I don't!' he insisted over his shoulder as Aoi laughed and twisted out of his hold. 'Aoi's making it up!'

Yashiro needed a moment to process. Then he laughed and turned back to his work.

'Aoi, stop telling lies about your brother,' he called.

'I'm not!' Aoi called back.

'Then stop telling the truth about your brother.'

Sotaro went to his bedroom and slammed the door, praying for an earthquake to swallow the apartment whole. But when he buried his face in his pillow he realised he was smiling and that he was secretly relieved at how casually his father had responded.

* * *

A few nights later, during which Sotaro was mercifully able to get several full nights' sleep, all four ended up in the living room. It was a rare occurrence; between all of Aoi's socialising and endless string of extra-curricula commitments and Sotaro's intensive kendo practice and Yashiro's occasional late nights, usually at least one of them was missing.

Aoi was there first and she was watching a reality show about celebrities on an island.

'No, no, no,' Yashiro said, swiftly taking the remote from her hand and changing the channel. 'No daughter of mine is watching trash.'

'But there's hot guys with no shirts on!' Aoi complained. 'Don't pretend you don't want to see that too, Oyaji.'

'What are you talking about?' Yashiro said without skipping a beat, just as Doumeki sat down. 'I only have eyes for your Touchan.'

Aoi snorted at the baldness of the lie. Yashiro grinned and changed the channel again. They came across a rerun of _The Godfather._

'I like this movie,' Sotaro said, as he sat on the rug before the couch.

'That's my boy,' Yashiro said warmly, eliciting a faint smile from Sotaro. 'Aoi, you should be more like your brother.'

'So I should listen to you and Touchan having sex?' Aoi replied, quick as a whip.

She and Yashiro dissolved into hysterics as the other two flushed identical flushes.

In the background, Marlon Brando sat in a cloud of cigarette smoke, the master of a hidden underground world.

* * *

Sotaro's suspicion about his fathers' pasts grew over the years. Yashiro had provided colourful reasons for what had happened to Doumeki's pinky, and no two stories were ever the same. Besides that, he saw how Yashiro sometimes tense up if they were walking home at night. Certain types of people and vehicles with tinted windows made him very slightly anxious in a way that only Doumeki and Sotaro were able to notice.

One day, when he was sixteen and Aoi had already moved to Tokyo to attend unviersity, Sotaro answered the door to a man he had never seen before. He wore glasses and had a cigarette in the corner of his mouth.

Kageyama blinked, staring at a tall, well-built kid who was the spitting image of Doumeki, with only subtle differences in his mouth and jaw showing hints of Yashiro.

'Uh… is Yashiro here?'

The stare he received also reminded him very strongly of Doumeki. The kid seemed to be considering the simple question with some gravity.

'Yes,' he said finally, as though having assessed him. He stepped aside and let Kageyama into the flat. He then went to the study.

'Oyaji, someone's here to see you.'

'Who?'

'I don't know.'

Meanwhile, Kageyama's ears rang with the word 'Oyaji'. He still couldn't quite believe it. Yashiro came into the living room and froze. Sotaro, who had followed, saw the look on Yashiro's face and was immediately suspicious of the stranger. He suddenly wished Doumeki was home.

'Oyaji?' he said hesitantly.

'It's alright,' Yashiro said, recovering quickly and turning to Sotaro. 'Can you give us a minute?'

Reluctantly, Sotaro stepped out of sight. But he stayed within earshot.

'He looks just like Doumeki,' Kageyama said.

'Uncanny, isn't it?' Yashiro said, with a proud smile.

'Is he here? Doumeki, I mean.'

'He's out shopping.'

Kageyama was slightly relieved.

'How's Kuga?' Yashiro asked.

'Fine. He runs the restaurant now, the one he used to wait in.'

'Sounds about right.'

Sotaro listened and tried to hear past what was being said. He tried to understand the quiet tones and the pauses that sometimes lasted a beat too long, as though they were still trying to get a feel for the other. Yashiro's tone was light in a way that Sotaro recognised as forced. Almost nervous. And the other man's voice was gruff and awkward.

He heard Yashiro then ask, 'How did you find me?'

Sotaro's pulse quickened.

'Misumi,' Kageyama said. 'I don't know if you heard, but he's not doing well. Cancer.'

'I know, he called. Seems he's known where I've been this whole time, the sly bastard. I'm thinking of paying Tokyo a visit to see him.'

Sotaro waited. After a small pause, the other man spoke again.

'I don't know why, but Misumi asked to see me and he... told me things.' Another pause. 'He told me about the debt. For my family's clinic. He said that when you were nineteen, you…'

Sotaro moved closer, straining his ears.

Yashiro's heart pounded. Kageyama looked just the same as he did eighteen years ago, except for an extra line or two around his eyes. But the way he was looking at Yashiro wasn't familiar. It made him anxious. It made him realise they were getting uncomfortably close to something that had remained sealed for a long time.

'Why would you take that debt on yourself? I mean you…' Kageyama struggled. 'You're the reason why our family was able to keep the clinic. But I don't understand why you –'

He trailed off.

'You flew all the way here to ask me about something I did when I was nineteen?' Yashiro said, trying somewhat vainly to wear a casual tone.

'I took the Shinkansen,' Kageyama absently muttered.

'Does Kuga know you're here?'

A pause.

'No.'

A longer pause. For no reason, Sotaro's hackles raised. He wanted the stranger out of his house.

Kageyama realised how bizarre it all was, how uncharacteristically impulsive for him to have gotten on a train to Osaka and appear in Yashiro's life unannounced. But the revelation had rocked him so deeply that he couldn't have brought himself to say anything over the phone.

As he stared at Yashiro, at the changes to his hair and face and other more ineffable things, he realised that fatherhood, against all odds, suited him well.

'Why did you do it?' he asked finally.

Yashiro suddenly felt stripped bare. Worse than when he had been surrounded by men who leered and groped and took turns. It was with a huge effort that he was able to hold Kageyama's gaze.

'Do you really want me to say it?' he said, with a quiet, sad smile.

Kageyama's pulse hit the roof.

It couldn't be. It was a ridiculous, unreal possibility that floated to him once or twice as he sat on the train, and it carried all the bearings of something that simply couldn't be true. But now, he suddenly saw it in Yashiro's eyes. Something he hadn't recognised decades ago when they were just kids. Sotaro's age.

And in fact, Sotaro's intuition was going on overdrive.

'You –' Kageyama stammered, feeling winded. 'But you never… said anything –'

'Oyaji,' Sotaro said, stepping back into the living room and making them both turn. 'I'm going to be late for practice.'

He stared resolutely at Kageyama while he spoke, enough that Kageyama read him loud and clear. In a way, he was relieved for the interruption. He stood up, feeling dazed.

'I should, uh… I should go. I shouldn't have come out of the blue... like this.'

Yashiro said nothing. He got up.

Sotaro glared, his hands in fists, as they went to the front door. He couldn't hear what they were saying anymore.

Once Kageyama stepped out into the hallway, he seemed to hesitate again before turning.

'I – I don't know how to deal with… owing you this much,' he said, suddenly looking overwhelmed. He couldn't fathom the idea that so much of what Yashiro had gone through had been entirely his fault.

'You don't owe me anything,' Yashiro said gently. And as he spoke, he realised how true it was. How past it he really was.

 _Over time, you realise everything in the past, everyone in the past, they were all pointing towards this one thing. This one bond._

And this one place, where Yashiro was standing now.

'Thank you,' Kageyama said, at length, his voice stiff under the weight of the revelation and his confusion and his gratitude.

Yashiro wondered if he had ever heard that tone in Kageyama's voice before. They held each other's gazes for a long time. School rooftops and the nurse's office.

Once the door was closed, Yashiro stared at it for a while, and Kageyama remained on the other side for the same amount of time. Then Kageyama turned, wondering what he might bring back for Kuga as a souvenir to make up for the fact that he had disappeared for a whole day.

And Yashiro turned, walked past Sotaro and picked up his car keys. He wondered if he was imagining the strange look in his son's eyes.

'Ready?' he said with a smile.

He didn't tell Doumeki about Kageyama's visit. And he was quietly relieved when it became clear that Sotaro wasn't going to mention it either.

* * *

Debts and favours and shady pasts in Tokyo and missing pinkies all amounted to something that Sotaro could no longer ignore. Two years later, in his last year of high-school, it came out definitively, and it turned into a brawl in the school corridors.

Doumeki got a call from the principal saying his son had been involved in a fight and he would need to pick him up.

Sotaro was sporting a cut lip and he had trouble meeting his father's eye. The other kid, Doumeki found out, had been sent to hospital for stitches.

'There was an issue regarding name-calling, from what I heard,' the principal reported. 'But no one wants to tell me the details. Sotaro has been suspended for three days.'

As it turned out, one of Sotaro's classmates was the kid brother of someone who had once belonged to Matsubara. He recognised Yashiro instantly when he dropped Sotaro off at school the previous day, and the rumours flew from there – that Sotaro's Omega father had once been a renowned Yakuza whore in Tokyo.

In the corridor, between classes, Sotaro had been taunted by the guy himself – a beefy guy by the name of Shizuka.

'How does it feel to have a slut for a father?' he said, drawing smirks from his friends. 'I bet you've fucked him too, haven't you? I bet he loves it when his Alpha son gives it to him.'

In that moment, Sotaro only remembered how much he had hurt his father almost ten years ago when he learned the truth about Omegas.

And so he calmly stepped up to Shizuka and delivered a powerful blow to his mouth that Shizuka didn't see coming. Shizuka was sprawled on the floor and Sotaro hovered over him, beating him to within an inch of his life.

'If you repeat what you said about my father to _anyone,'_ Sotaro had hissed into his ear, 'I will kill you.'

The kid was battered enough to believe him. That was also why the principal was left in the dark about what exactly had taken place. Sotaro was only pulled off thanks to Shizuka's friends, who got in a few solid punches before they let him go.

He couldn't bring all of it up with his father. But he told him enough; he divulged that someone in school had discovered that Yashiro had been in the Yakuza.

Doumeki clenched his jaw. For a few tense moments, he felt his guard go up like it did in the old days. But he knew, rationally, that a lot had changed in the past twenty years, enough that old grudges no longer held any sway. Nevertheless, he glanced at Sotaro and wondered how it had felt for him to learn such a thing about his father.

'That's how you lost your finger, isn't it?' Sotaro said, his tone subdued. 'You were in the Yakuza with Oyaji.'

Doumeki hesitated.

'Yes,' he said.

They drove home in silence. Right before they got out, Sotaro made a quiet announcement that Doumeki wasn't expecting.

'I think I want to become a cop. Like you were.'

After a pause, Doumeki stared at him thoughtfully before saying, 'I think you'd be really good.'

They shared a quick glance that communicated something, a certain kindred spirit, that no one else would have been able to understand. Sotaro smiled, his lip still stinging. And he was grateful that Doumeki never told Yashiro the whole truth about why he had been suspended.

He thought, in turn, about the small secret he kept from Doumeki; the visitor from Yashiro's past. It occurred to him, in an abstract way, that there was a lot to be said about silences that were kept for love.

* * *

Doumeki's heart rate suffered when he found out that Aoi had a new boyfriend in university. He was wonderful, Aoi insisted. He was also studying law, like her, and he was intelligent and gentle and adoring and just the most amazing man she'd ever met.

Doumeki seethed. He had been blessed by the fact that he hadn't had to deal with any suitors until Aoi's final year of high-school, when a few pompous Alphas, who were tired of the sameness of the Betas and Omegas they had dated in middle-school, had tried their hand at claiming her for their own. For any who were brave enough to turn up at her house with flowers, a single look from her father had been enough to make them quail and reconsider. And Doumeki had gravely regretted being unable to do that when she moved away.

When she came home for a visit that year, she brought the new guy along, after issuing a warning to Doumeki.

'If you scare him away, I won't forgive you, Touchan!'

The guy turned out to be very slightly taller than Doumeki. For that simple reason, Doumeki instantly hated him and Yashiro instantly loved him. He began calling Nakazawa his son-in-law within five minutes of meeting him.

Doumeki, on the other hand, would silently nurse his resentment of Nakazawa right until the moment ten years later when he held his grandson.

* * *

The day before Aoi was due to arrive from Tokyo and introduce her boyfriend to the family, Sotaro had accompanied Yashiro on a grocery run. Though Yashiro hated groceries, he hated dealing with cars even more, and one of theirs needed to be taken into the shop. So while Doumeki was at the mechanic, Yashiro recruited Sotaro's help and headed for the supermarket.

'Why in the hell are there twelve different kinds of olive oil?' he demanded, staring perplexed at the offerings on the shelves.

'They're different flavours,' Sotaro explained patiently. Out of the four of them, he was the most skilled in the kitchen. 'Extra virgin is good for some things that the other kinds aren't good for.'

'Extra virgins aren't good for anything,' Yashiro muttered under his breath, causing Sotaro to smile despite himself.

It was while they were wandering down the produce aisle that Yashiro felt it coming.

He didn't at all expect it and dryly berated himself over how it still managed to catch him off guard, given how many times it had happened in the past. To be fair, it had been many years since he experienced an unscheduled heat. Yashiro always kept it under control with well-timed suppressants and by keeping Doumeki handy for days when it was particularly difficult to suppress. But for no reason, it happened then, a few weeks early, in the middle of the supermarket.

Sotaro turned to see Yashiro knock a few oranges off the display as he sank to the floor, gasping and sweating.

And the full force of an Omega in heat hit Sotaro for the first time. It permeated throughout the supermarket and the few Alphas nearby suddenly turned. Sotaro took a step back, blinking in confusion. It was a powerful, pulsing scent that was more than just a scent. Only the fact that it was his own father allowed him to retain his senses.

'Sotaro,' Yashiro gasped, eyes watering, his tone desperate and apologetic.

Sotaro hesitated for only a moment longer before he stepped forward and helped his father to his feet. At eighteen, he was already as tall as Doumeki and just as broad and he supported Yashiro's weight without a second thought. They headed for the nearest exit before the other Alphas found them.

There was a close call in the parking lot when an Alpha suddenly appeared, his eyes glazed with lust. Sotaro's training kicked in without his knowledge and he elbowed the guy viciously in the stomach when he drew near. They made it to the car. Sotaro helped Yashiro into the backseat before getting behind the wheel.

'Where… where should I go?' he asked, heart pounding.

'Home,' Yashiro said.

There were two short flights of steps that led from the parking lot beneath their building to the lobby with the elevators. Yashiro was barely able to walk. His body kept trying to drag him to the ground with each step. Halfway up the first flight, Sotaro set his jaw and lifted him fully into his arms.

Once in the apartment, he lowered Yashiro into bed and straightened.

'Call… your father...' Yashiro panted, his eyes glazed.

Sotaro did so at once. Doumeki turned up twenty minutes later, smelling Yashiro's heat as soon as he was in the hallway outside. Sotaro paced uncertainly in the living room and was relieved to see him.

Before Doumeki disappeared into the bedroom, he looked at Sotaro gratefully, with a vague idea of what he must have done for Yashiro, and stuffed a roll of cash into his hand.

'Go watch a movie… or something.'

Sotaro blushed and left the apartment without a backwards glance.

Doumeki went into the bedroom and the scent of Yashiro's arousal engulfed him completely. Yashiro lifted his head and nearly moaned with relief. He held out a hand and pulled Doumeki to him hungrily. Their mouths met hotly and Doumeki slid both his hands beneath Yashiro's shirt.

His body was laid bare completely before Doumeki parted his legs and pressed between them. He stared down at Yashiro's body, leaner than when he had first met him, still beautiful, and all his. His for the past twenty years.

He pushed in and Yashiro moaned long and loud. Doumeki's head dropped to his chest and for a moment they looked just as they did when Doumeki did so for the first time on his thin futon in his tiny, empty apartment.

An hour later, after both had come several times each, Doumeki held him facedown on the bed and pulsed his cock into him in little bursts, his come collecting in the condom. Then he pulled out and rolled onto his back, feeling his heat subsiding slowly. Yashiro felt the same. The heat lifted from his flesh and he regained his senses.

He folded against Doumeki's body and Doumeki held him and kissed his temple. They were two decades younger in that moment and they basked in it for as long as they could.

'This,' murmured Yashiro, 'is what happens when I try doing the groceries.'

'Sorry, Boss,' Doumeki mumbled, in automatic response. He did, in fact, feel responsible for not having been there.

Then Yashiro remembered Sotaro.

'Is Sotaro okay? I can't remember what happened but I think he – he had to knock an Alpha out of the way.'

Concerned, Doumeki picked up his phone. 'He looked okay,' he said uncertainly.

As Doumeki texted him, Yashiro ran a hand through his hair and remembered snippets of the supermarket and the parking lot.

'He's so strong now. I think he carried me up the stairs.'

Doumeki's surprise quickly turned into pride. He remembered the kid Sotaro had sent to the hospital earlier that year.

'He said he wants to be a cop,' he said, realising he had never told Yashiro.

'Did he?'

When Doumeki went to the bathroom, his phone lit up on the bedside table. Out of sheer curiosity, Yashiro picked it up and looked at Doumeki's conversation with Sotaro.

 _-Are you okay?_

 _-Yes._

 _-I_ _can pick you up now if you like._

 _-I'm downstairs in the lobby._

 _-Did the movie finish already?_

 _-I didn't go to a movie._

 _-Oh._

 _-Can I come home yet?_

 _-Yes._

 _-Okay._

Yashiro laughed. He could barely tell who was who.

When Sotaro returned, Yashiro was in the kitchen making coffee. Sotaro saw him and tried to quickly breeze past into his room but Yashiro intercepted him.

'Not so fast.'

He inspected Sotaro intently, trying to find out if he had been hurt in any way, while Sotaro, trying to forget the awkward and surreal afternoon that had passed, gruffly tried to convince him he was fine.

Then Yashiro stared up at his obvious discomfort and smiled.

'You know, back when I envisioned what you would be like, I thought maybe you would be tall like your Touchan but you'd have my wit. Turns out you're just Doumeki, through and through.' He straightened Sotaro's collar. 'I'm glad I was wrong.'

After a beat or two, he was rewarded by one of Sotaro's rare smiles.

* * *

Fourteen years before that moment, fourteen years before Yashiro learned what Sotaro planned to do with his life and moved Yashiro to make the wry observation that a pair of ex-mobsters had somehow birthed a cop and a lawyer, four-year old Sotaro sat cross-legged by the bed in his pyjamas and stared at his father, concerned about how melancholy his usually happy father had seemed that day, ever since he had picked him from preschool.

When Doumeki came to the door holding Aoi and asked what he was doing, Sotaro had replied, 'Oyaji's sad.'

He came to Doumeki when beckoned and took his hand.

'He's fine,' Doumeki assured him.

For a guilty moment, Doumeki wanted to wake Yashiro, to show him how surrounded he was. How protected and loved. He cast a glance over his shoulder at the golden hair caught in lamplight.

And he paused before he took the children to their bedrooms. He squeezed Sotaro's hand slightly and Sotaro looked up.

'Your Oyaji has had a hard life,' he said quietly to them both. 'So it's up to us to change that for him.'

Sotaro looked up at him with intent, serious eyes. Doumeki looked first at him and then at Aoi.

'It's up to us to protect him. Okay?'

Aoi nodded gravely and Sotaro lowered his chin to look at his Oyaji once more.

At that moment, Yashiro stirred. He opened his eyes and felt that strange hollowness again when he thought of Eiji Takahashi. And then he sensed movement by the door and lifted his head off the pillow slightly.

'What are my three Alphas doing over there?' he asked, his voice thick with sleep.

'Can we sleep with you, Oyaji?' Sotaro asked impulsively.

'Yeah, can we?' Aoi chimed in, annoyed she hadn't thought of it first.

Yashiro smiled. 'Sure.'

Sotaro hurried forwards and Doumeki followed. He lowered Aoi to the bed. Yashiro turned on his side and Sotaro moved in close against his chest.

'Touchan says you were sad when you were little,' Aoi said promptly, as she settled on Sotaro's other side.

'He did?' Yashiro said in surprise. He met Doumeki's gaze as Doumeki lay down behind Aoi. It was a subtle, slightly abashed glance Doumeki threw back.

'Yeah,' Aoi went on. 'Was it because you had a bully? Miss Shigeki says to tell her if anyone is being a bully or being mean. Was someone mean to you, Oyaji?'

Sotaro stared up into Yashiro's eyes, suddenly wondering the same.

Yashiro exchanged another look with Doumeki. He thought again of Eiji and what he must have suffered. The life that would never be the same again.

'Something like that,' he said quietly.

'Well, I know karate now, and sensei says I'm getting really good. So if he ever comes back, I'll go _hai-yah!'_ Aoi sat up and delivered a sharp side-swipe at Yashiro's arm.

Yashiro chuckled. 'You are getting good.'

'Are you still sad?' Sotaro asked.

Yashiro glanced down. He brushed Sotaro's short spikes of hair back from his forehead. His gaze moved from Sotaro to Aoi to Doumeki, who, as ever, listened quietly. He suddenly felt as though his life had turned into a long epilogue that he never saw coming. Something he had never had the imagination, or been foolish enough, to even hope for.

'No,' he said.

Doumeki watched Yashiro's half-smile and his half-lidded eyes, his hair still bright and back-lit by the warm golden lamplight. An Omega among Alphas.

Sotaro's eyelids began to droop. Aoi leaned her head on Doumeki's arm.

'Can you sing a song?' Sotaro asked sleepily.

'Mm,' Aoi agreed, her eyes already closed.

Yashiro smiled again. He was quiet for a moment before he sang their favourite lullaby, the one which Doumeki heard for the first time long ago when he listened at the door to Aoi's nursery.

 _'Hush now, baby, don't you cry._  
 _Rest your wings, my butterfly._  
 _Peace will come to you in time,  
And –'_

'We'll protect you, Oyaji,' Sotaro mumbled into his chest.

Yashiro only barely heard his words. He glanced down in surprise.

And then, suddenly, his throat closed with a feeling that was sudden and powerful and came from nowhere. Somehow, he managed to keep singing, though his voice now wavered slightly.

 _'And oh,_  
 _Through darkness,_ _  
Don't you ever stop believing...'_

He fought hard, but the tears came anyway. He was grateful that Aoi was already asleep and that Sotaro's eyes were closed, though he was still awake and listening.

 _'With love, alone,_  
 _With love you'll find your way,_ _  
My love.'_

But Doumeki saw. He reached across the bed and slipped his hand beneath Yashiro's head. Yashiro turned his face into his palm and cried as quietly as he could.

 _Fin_

* * *

 _ **Author's note:**_

 _"He suddenly felt as though his life had turned into a long epilogue that he never saw coming."_

 _That's how it felt when I was writing it lol. As I mentioned before, this was meant to a one-shot (Chapter 1) until some wonderful readers asked for more. What came to mind immediately afterwards were these 'Oyaji and Touchan' chapters. I sent the first scene to the incomparable Miyabi whose feedback was just so lovely and motivated me to write the rest, including the middle chapters that led to all this domesticity. (The chapters involving the Kaichou/Hirata/Aoi's inadvertent conception were just a bridge between the first chapter and these ones.) So thank you for that, Miyabi, my dear! 3_

 _On another note, as much as I love tragedy (and as much as I'm guiltily hoping for it in canon) it felt unexpectedly wonderful for me to go out of my comfort zone and envision/write a real happily-ever-after. In my mind, in this Omegaverse AU, Doumeki dies in his late eighties. Sotaro loves and cares for Yashiro until Yashiro dies two years later, at the close of a long, complicated, blessed life of unimaginable sorrows and entirely unexpected joys._

 _(Also, Sotaro gets with Eiji Takahashi, his friend from preschool - the one who was abused by his father and moved away. They meet again in university and they feel that fated-pair Alpha/Omega connection instantly, despite the fact that Eiji is dating some other guy at the time who is an asshole. Okay now I really want to write that little story too haha.)_

 _Anyway, sorry for the long author's note. I really hope you guys enjoyed! My past week has been totally taken up by this AU and it makes me happy to think anyone at all shared in that! Thank you, everyone Xxx_

 _PS I did a final drawing for this story - a family portrait. It's up on Ao3 at the end of this story :)_


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